poll on range and scale

[Bravix]

While multi-crew artillery would help balance it, it simply isn't realistic. We have automated artillery (put location in computer, pow pow. Loads itself and everything) available now, I think that in the future one person would be more than enough.

I'd say to make it slower-firing than the flail. Not too much, just a little. Then, have different ammo types. This would REALLY help balance it. The way it is now, the flail shots are devastating to both infantry and vehicles. Make it like the liberator in a way. Have armor piercing art rounds and some HE/Cluster shells. Maybe even EMP shells?

It would appear that non-capital bases are shielded now, so that helps protect from getting door camped. By the time they get the shield down, they already have the CY.

[Traak]

Originally Posted by Bravix

It would appear that non-capital bases are shielded now, so that helps protect from getting door camped. By the time they get the shield down, they already have the CY.

Shields down as a consequence of catching the base, or part of it, as opposed to the first thing that happens the moment someone runs/teleports/whatever into the CC and hacks it? That's a nice thought.

[HELLFISH88]

Artillery is a part of warfare and I think it has it's place in the game. Yes it's frustrating. That's the point. The way to "counter" artillery player's isn't by you as an individual simply killing them. Things like Proper air cover and intelligent will defend you against the artillery before it becomes a problem...or at least it COULD. This is why teamwork matters and an example as to why you would want your empire to have dedicated pilots. On the individual level you counter artillery by not lingering in exposed positions and not grouping up. (be it on foot or in vehicles)

You can't be upset at artillery because it does loads of damage and has a massive range. It's artillery that's what it does. Scoring big multi kills with the flail was one of those fun "planetside" moments. Especially when working with a laze spotter. In the same right no was cloaking up and sneaking up on a squad of deployed enemy flails and Boomerang them all. Loads of kills + Satisfaction for contributing by killing something important. Flails and artillery could be used to "Camp" structure doors. It was annoying if you got hit but the flail rounds moved so slow you had plenty of time when the door was safe to use. This only became an issue once about 5 or so flails were all firing on the door as at that point rounds were impacting every few seconds.

For artillery to work we need to make it difficult to acquire and field so it cant be abused and exploited.

[Jimmuc]

i always had the idea of capturable arty emplacements with 3 guns each. perhaps make them closer towards each empires foothold, make them destroyable/repairable or whatever...just my two cents

[Traak]

I think artillery is possible, but it is manned by a crew OUTSIDE. Flails were just too uber.

And, make it so they have to be aimed by angle and traverse. In other words, no lazing. You have to have a person spotting and letting you know "North 250, East 50", so you wouldn't just aim at a laze WP and fire. You would actually have to manually crank the piece higher or lower to aim it, and, obviously, the longer the distance, the greater a difference an incremental change in traverse and elevation would make.

Also, wind effects would be greater the longer the trajectory.

I know that self-propelled artillery pieces already exist. I just don't want to see them in-game. Unless they have the armor of a bicycle. We have tanks with big guns for the self-propelled stuff.

Back on the concept: The present flail just sucks too hard for most people to be welcome.

Further, the larger the powder charge needed (i.e., the longer the range) then the less the explosive power of the projectile. At maximum range, it might have the effect of a grenade. At point-blank range, closer to the effect of a 150.

And give the shells some speed, and give them more of an artillery sound, not a sound like an alien fat chick ripping open her scaly duds after eating too many space twinkies.

[ringring]

Originally Posted by Traak

I think artillery is possible, but it is manned by a crew OUTSIDE. Flails were just too uber.

And, make it so they have to be aimed by angle and traverse. In other words, no lazing. You have to have a person spotting and letting you know "North 250, East 50", so you wouldn't just aim at a laze WP and fire. You would actually have to manually crank the piece higher or lower to aim it, and, obviously, the longer the distance, the greater a difference an incremental change in traverse and elevation would make.

Also, wind effects would be greater the longer the trajectory.

I know that self-propelled artillery pieces already exist. I just don't want to see them in-game. Unless they have the armor of a bicycle. We have tanks with big guns for the self-propelled stuff.

Back on the concept: The present flail just sucks too hard for most people to be welcome.

Further, the larger the powder charge needed (i.e., the longer the range) then the less the explosive power of the projectile. At maximum range, it might have the effect of a grenade. At point-blank range, closer to the effect of a 150.

And give the shells some speed, and give them more of an artillery sound, not a sound like an alien fat chick ripping open her scaly duds after eating too many space twinkies.

If artillery can exist, which I think it should, there should also be a counter. How about, artillery radar? A artillery team could equip radar to pinpoint enemy radar and do counter battery fire. This would encourage the guns to 'shoot and scoot'.

[Sirisian]

Originally Posted by Traak

I think artillery is possible, but it is manned by a crew OUTSIDE. Flails were just too uber.

And, make it so they have to be aimed by angle and traverse. In other words, no lazing. You have to have a person spotting and letting you know "North 250, East 50", so you wouldn't just aim at a laze WP and fire. You would actually have to manually crank the piece higher or lower to aim it, and, obviously, the longer the distance, the greater a difference an incremental change in traverse and elevation would make.

Also, wind effects would be greater the longer the trajectory.
[...]
Back on the concept: The present flail just sucks too hard for most people to be welcome.

I don't want to sit by an artillery piece to use. Ideally the developers should be focusing on squad oriented artillery. My earlier thread on a laze artillery covered these ideas while removing the unecessary spam and turning it into a tactical weapon. However, it sounds like you want more of an area denial weapon so keeping someone at the artillery piece might be necessary to justify the damage.

That thread also includes the concept of AA being used to shoot down shells as a defense so bases will automatically defend themselves.

[CuddlyChud]

Didn't the Devs already say that indirect fire weapon systems weren't going to be in the game? I feel like Higby mentioned something about that, which is why the Lib isn't a bomber but a gunship.

The strategist/meta-gamer inside of me says artillery and such would be really cool, but the more basic gamer inside me says: Screw that. It sucks to get killed by something you can't do anything about. I think there's a reason why most FPS games don't put in artillery. It's so important to get the balance perfect, otherwise its frustratingly over-powered, or useless. There's so little wiggle room when it comes to artillery.

[Erendil]

Originally Posted by HELLFISH88

Artillery is a part of warfare and I think it has it's place in the game. Yes it's frustrating. That's the point. The way to "counter" artillery player's isn't by you as an individual simply killing them. Things like Proper air cover and intelligent will defend you against the artillery before it becomes a problem...or at least it COULD. This is why teamwork matters and an example as to why you would want your empire to have dedicated pilots. On the individual level you counter artillery by not lingering in exposed positions and not grouping up. (be it on foot or in vehicles)

You can't be upset at artillery because it does loads of damage and has a massive range. It's artillery that's what it does. Scoring big multi kills with the flail was one of those fun "planetside" moments. Especially when working with a laze spotter. In the same right no was cloaking up and sneaking up on a squad of deployed enemy flails and Boomerang them all. Loads of kills + Satisfaction for contributing by killing something important. Flails and artillery could be used to "Camp" structure doors. It was annoying if you got hit but the flail rounds moved so slow you had plenty of time when the door was safe to use. This only became an issue once about 5 or so flails were all firing on the door as at that point rounds were impacting every few seconds.

For artillery to work we need to make it difficult to acquire and field so it cant be abused and exploited.

I'm not sure if you're falling into this trap or not, but please keep in mind that PS1 & 2 are not war simulators. They are war games. The primary focus should be geared towards a contest of skills that is fun for all sides involved. Not realism.

Scoring lots of kills may have been fun for you as a flail user, but I can bet it was not fun at all for the people you were shooting if they had no way to counter it, which was often the case (like if they had no tech to pull Reavers, for example, or you were parked by the repair term of a friendly base w/ AA turret/MAX support).

If something is very powerful and easy to use but next to impossible to counter or defend against that's a recipe for terribly abusable gameplay and it should be nerfed/change/removed. Unfortunately we know so little about the game that there's no way to tell whether long range artillery would fit into this category like the Flail did in PS1. I'm inclined to say no to its inclusion tho on the basis of how easy it would probably be to abuse, tho.

Originally Posted by CuddlyChud

Didn't the Devs already say that indirect fire weapon systems weren't going to be in the game? I feel like Higby mentioned something about that, which is why the Lib isn't a bomber but a gunship.

The strategist/meta-gamer inside of me says artillery and such would be really cool, but the more basic gamer inside me says: Screw that. It sucks to get killed by something you can't do anything about. I think there's a reason why most FPS games don't put in artillery. It's so important to get the balance perfect, otherwise its frustratingly over-powered, or useless. There's so little wiggle room when it comes to artillery.

Very well said. In an FPS game that's supposed to be a fun contest of skills it's difficult to develop artillery that would not only be fun for the user, but also require some skill and be counterable by the enemy without making it useless.

But you're right, I do believe higby said that they were concentrating on the direct fire aspects of warfare, and not on things like artillery, missile strikes, etc. So this discussion may be a moot point.

[Sirisian]

Originally Posted by IDukeNukeml

750 meters, I beleive all small arms fire should be able to be lethal at this range with bullet drop or laser sway.

I'd prefer projectiles to be defined by muzzle velocity and ammo drag. 750 meters seems unneeded. A 400 m/s muzzle velocity would be nice since using earth gravity you'd see bullet drop at 100 meters. If you've seen the new tribes game you'd see this kind of unrealistic bullet drop makes weapons feel more skillful. The nice thing about Auraxis is special air properties could explain away such effects.

[Erendil]

Originally Posted by Sirisian

I'd prefer projectiles to be defined by muzzle velocity and ammo drag. 750 meters seems unneeded. A 400 m/s muzzle velocity would be nice since using earth gravity you'd see bullet drop at 100 meters. If you've seen the new tribes game you'd see this kind of unrealistic bullet drop makes weapons feel more skillful. The nice thing about Auraxis is special air properties could explain away such effects.

FWIW, IIRC Cycler rounds move at 470m/s, Gauss at 475m/s, and Pulsar at 500m/s. I got the impression from the AGN game footage that the Cycler's round were traveling somewhat faster than that. It's hard to say for sure tho since Higby was firing into the air at nothing in particular and it was night time, so distances were hard to judge.


I think DukeNukem's range wishes are a little excessive too and might put unnecessary strain on the servers having to track projectiles that distance and having to calculate collisions, keeping track of every shot longer, etc. And 3-5 klicks for vehicle weapons puts them into the realm of medium-range artillery given the size of the game maps.

I'd be happy with pushing everything out to twice the distance of PS1. So you'd have for example:

Max range for rifles: 400m, although 500m might be better (PS1 base SOI = 525m for comparison)
Max range for ESAV: 500m for Striker/Phoenix, 600m for Lancer
MAX range for vehicles: 600-650m
Max draw distance for enemy units: 650m
Max distance registered by your reticle: 1000m

[Traak]

Originally Posted by Erendil

...might put unnecessary strain on the servers having to track projectiles that distance and having to calculate collisions, keeping track of every shot longer, etc.

Tracking one artillery shell would be more strain than the 400 rpm of an MCG or whatever it fired? I don't think it would.

[Erendil]

Originally Posted by Traak

Tracking one artillery shell would be more strain than the 400 rpm of an MCG or whatever it fired? I don't think it would.

No of course not. Don't be obtuse. I was talking about the combined effect of greatly extending ranges for all weapons in general.

If all weapon ranges are extended way out, then you'd multiply that one shell by 2000 (or however many players are on the server), then multiply that by the average RoF of every weapon. Not only are there now way more projectiles for everyone to keep track of, but each projectile has more potential things that it can run into so more collision-detection calculations need to be made for each one.

And depending on how this is done it could noticeably affect server load, or possibly client load since I believe they're going to be using a CSHD/SSHD hybrid of some sort.

And of course if you extend weapon ranges way out then you'll have to extend avatar draw distance out as well since nobody will want to be shot by an enemy that doesn't get drawn on your screen. And that further increases the CPU/GPU load on the clients. Then you'll need to increase the draw distance for lighting effects, explosions, etc.

See where I'm going?

[Traak]

Originally Posted by Erendil

No of course not. Don't be obtuse.

I wasn't being obtuse. I didn't know you were not speaking of all the shells everywhere until you explained it. Yeah, that would be a LOT more calculations and net traffic.

[Erendil]

Originally Posted by Traak

I wasn't being obtuse. I didn't know you were not speaking of all the shells everywhere until you explained it. Yeah, that would be a LOT more calculations and net traffic.

Oh, sorry. In light of some of your posts in the Teamwork for Air Combat thread, I thought u were just trying to be a PITA. You were ripping it up over there (not that that's a bad thing- some of what u wrote was f'ing hilarious, comparing AMS gankers to pervs "I love it when they struggle," and the defenders to a kid hoping uncle doesn't pay them a visit at night. Twisted, but classic ). I thought some of that waz spillin' over here.

My bad.


So, back on topic.... One of the things I hope they watch out for when it comes to weapon ranges is to make sure that ranges within similar weapon types aren't that far off from one another. Things like snipers sitting at 201m picking off enemy MA riflemen with impunity, or wasps hanging 150m outside of max Mossie 12mm range and launching missile after missile without any fear of repurcussion are annoying as hell to be at the receiving at of.

People should be able to at least have a chance of defending themselves against attacks made by units that are similar to themselves - within reason of course. If you're toting a shotgun outdoors don't expect to be able to countersnipe, for example.

But if a sniper takes pot shots at a squad of rilfemen from 600m out, the squad should be able open up and return volleys of fire that - even though not nearly as accurate - might at least cause said sniper to take cover. The rifleman may not be able to reliably hit a man-sized target @600m, but if he throws enough lead in that direction he should at least have a chance that a lucky bullet or two might find their target...