Orbital Strike: Does it negate good team game play?

[p0intman]

Originally Posted by Tatwi

That's 100% not the point.

The point is that the game play mechanic of Planetside's Orbital Strike can, in an instant, negate hours of team play, without any threat to the side using the OS or any team play involved with using the OS. Also, there isn't any team game play involved in countering the PS1 OS game play mechanic (moving out of the way is not what I would consider compelling team game play).

So the TL;DR version of "the point" is: The game play mechanic of Planetside's Orbital Strike seems contrary to the "strategic teamwork" spirit of Planetside 2.

You weren't trying hard enough. Sorry, No points for second place. The fact it took you "hours" to establish that beach head is amazing, it should have been done fairly quickly, half hour at most.

And because you continue to complain, it is my mission this week in PS1 to be as massive of a pain to the VS as I can be.

[Hamma]

p0intman,

Let's try and be a bit more constructive in our replies mkay.

[Pillar of Armor]

In the early days of PS1 the OS was cool because it was pretty rare to see people using them. Now, every battle you always need to keep moving because you can expect 10+ OSes in a single fight. As long as they are very hard to get (1-2 years of certs) and as long as you can't use them very often (once every 24-48 hours) I think they would be fine in PS2.

I would definitively argue that OSes interfere with teamwork. Squads and platoons are much more effective when they are tightly grouped than when they are scattered. That is what made the Romans so effective and I saw it in action the other night. We had a column of tanks and we were clustered around the south CY entrance at Ixtab. We were dominating for a while until three OSes sent us running or destroyed us. After that, our attack was watered down because we were all spread out. We lost a lot of ground because of a few people pressing the easy win button. The OS seriously punishes squads that are coordinated like we were.

[Kezz]

Originally Posted by Pillar of Armor

I would definitively argue that OSes interfere with teamwork. Squads and platoons are much more effective when they are tightly grouped than when they are scattered.

That is half the point of artillery and the entire point the squad tactics developed to mitigate that, as arty got better.

[GreatMazinkaise]

Originally Posted by Kezz

That is half the point of artillery and the entire point the squad tactics developed to mitigate that, as arty got better.

Exactly... #1 rule of miniatures games is to avoid clumping your troops, and this applies in equally well in any game where there's lots of AoE insta-death weapons.

[MCYRook]

Except you absolutely can't avoid clumping troops in a large base fight in PS1. With the base layout in PS2, it may get a little better, but you still have vital, out-in-the-open spawnpoints that will be just as juicy targets as AMSes were in PS1. More juicy even, what with so many more players around.

And I'll say again: "Just put a very long cooldown on it, then it's fine" - no, it's not. It's just bad design. There's no reason for anyone to have something with an effort-to-reward ratio as low as an OS - not once in three hours, and not once in three days.

I REALLY hope the OS will get a serious redesign for PS2.

[LordReaver]

LordReaver: -=Warning=- OS Target, Spread Out!
LordReaver: -=Warning=- OS Target, Spread Out!
LordReaver: -=Warning=- OS Target, Spread Out!
LordReaver: -=Warning=- OS Target, Spread Out!

[fvdham]

I don't have a problem with OS.
I have a problem with OS being tied to Command Rank.
I don't want to see people play commander just to get the biggest gun the game.
The only reason to play commander should be victory.

[Kezz]

Originally Posted by fvdham

I don't want to see people play commander just to get the biggest gun the game.

This is certainly a valid concern, if PS1 is anything to go by. The number of people with OS is certainly far higher than the number of people posting useful stuff in Command Chat.

[GhettoPrince]

Well, back when the game was in its prime an OS was really rare, but now there are just so many CR5's that every single tower, base and front line fight will get hit by multiple orbital strikes, you literally can not go half an hour without seeing one.

I think it would be useful to limit OS's to one per hex , with a timer to keep them from being used again in that hex anytime soon, so you don't just get base defenses blasted with walking orbital strikes.

Alternatively, a massive resource cost.

[Kezz]

Originally Posted by GhettoPrince

I think it would be useful to limit OS's to one per hex...

Yeah. One per hex per [insert time limit here] would be good. Per hex, so large battlefields have room for more than one. There has to be some sort of handwave that lets each side have one per hex, though, or the first thing someone will do is let rip with an OS, just to deny the opportunity for the other side to use theirs.

Alternatively, a massive resource cost.

In the same way a large cert cost isn't really a deterrent because people will always get more cert points, a large resource cost isn't going to stop people over using it. They'll have to set the "economy" up so that a "casual scrub" isn't scraping their last Auraxium together to buy a grenade, which means that the "srs bsns" players and outfits will have resources coming out their ears. It'll reduce the pool of users, but with the populations we're looking at,"hot" zones will have pillars of light everywhere.

[Klockan]

Make OS cost something like 150 of the tank resource, aircraft resource and transport resource so that no matter what vehicles you like it will hurt a lot. Then basically you could have bought 2 tanks, 2 aircrafts and a large transport instead of the orbital strike, so the only ones to use it are players who aren't wasteful with their resources. Then it doesn't need to have a large cooldown, maybe have a regional cooldown as mentioned above at about 30 seconds (similar to the queue system for vehicles) so you cant have a large team just blanketing the whole area with them.

[Sledgecrushr]

OS is a dumb idea and I cant believe they are bringing it back. But I am looking forward to see how the devs are going to make this thing work.

[Crator]

Originally Posted by GhettoPrince

I think it would be useful to limit OS's to one per hex , with a timer to keep them from being used again in that hex anytime soon, so you don't just get base defenses blasted with walking orbital strikes.

One per hex, with timer, I like that!

[Buggsy]

OS was horrible in PS1, and it does destroy tactics.

I hated the EMP OS even more. I hate the way someone can push a button and destroy all of my deployables I spent 5 minutes setting up. In fact that's why I quit PS1 ~5 years ago.