Another Artillery Thread

[Marinealver]

Originally Posted by Gugabalog

I think the MLRS would work better for the TR due since it can fire very rapidly.

And then give the NC some sort of big rail gun?

Maybe a plasma mortar for the VS.

The MRLS will fire a volly of 5 cluster rockets fast but in a group then it has to cool down or aka reload. Thus slowing the rate of fire. The volly will be a scatter of cluster rockets so while it has a wider area of effect the scatter pattern will be rather erratic. Sort of like a shotgun pattern of cluster bombs.

The TR is simply straight foward. Shelling about 20 rounds before a reload continuing to shoot at an area and let the recoil do the scattering of the blasts. But if you see what rock or patch of ground they are shooting at you can move around or away from that.

As for the VS well you know they take the worse of both worlds being the lower rate of fire and the lower aoe and make something better of it such as longer range. So sort of like what the flail is now. The TR and NC can exchange fire from a couple of hexs away. The VS will do it from half a cont away.


Oh and that is because of the way I saw the empire vehicle charastics and their strategy.

TR has extra gunners, heavier armor, and faster rate of fire.

NC is more ballanced between speed and armor but has higer damage per shot, or in this case a better area of effect so it won't need to fire as fast as the TR.

The VS has the lightest of armor, however compensates with better manuveribility, decient speed and longer effective range, the VS has to rely on versality rather than the raw firepower or damage output that the other 2 empires have.

[Gugabalog]

You might be talkign about PS1 but your description of empire flavor is way off for Ps2

[Marinealver]

Originally Posted by Gugabalog

You might be talkign about PS1 but your description of empire flavor is way off for Ps2

True, I will admit that PS2 is diffrent from PS1, as far as vehicles now not needing gunners some stuff is still the same for example the TR has the highest RoF and the NC has the highets Damage Per Shot. VS somewhere in the middle. However that was the same way PS1 was designed and the diffrent traits sort of evolved as players figured out the metagame. TR were tough, the NC hurt people, and the VS were prepaired for anything.

[Gugabalog]

Now the TR are paper but super fast/fast firing

NC hard hitting and hard shelled

VS is all about precission (accuracy/manuverability)

[Graf]

Whats the range on these things? Need to get some perspective.

[Marinealver]

Originally Posted by Graf

Whats the range on these things? Need to get some perspective.

Well atleast a whole Hex or 2for starters.

[Nathaniak]

I would like to see a two-man SPG with a driver and a gunner. The vehicle would auto-reload after every shot (about 10-15 seconds), but would only carry a small number of shells (e.g 20). After running out, the vehicle would have to be taken to a vehicle depot to get more shells.

Firing would present the gunner with a simplified chart of the map, showing contours and buildings (only large facilities marked by name). The gunner would choose a location on the map, and the gun will adjust and fire at that location. It will be inaccurate, nothing like aim-at-an-individual-soldier like World of Tanks arty. The gun would have a limited traverse (e.g 10 degrees), so the driver would have to turn the vehicle if the gunner wants to move onto a different target.

Anyone could be a driver, but the gunner would have to be a cert. It could possibly be limited to engineers, but that might be too limiting. A front hull-mounted MG could be certed in, as could shell sidegrades (e.g. smaller shells are less powerful, but take up less space so you can fit a few more in). The driver's role whilst firing would be to update the gunner on targets and/or to patrol the area against attackers.

What do you think of this idea?

Edit: Suggested range of 2 kilometers. Also, shell tracers could possibly be seen coming from firing location by aircraft or people on high buildings. This would help to allow counter-battery fire and tracking down of arty by other factions.

Further edit: Vehicle basically the same for all factions, but with some ES weapons and upgrades.

[Buggsy]

Originally Posted by igster

Excellent use of the word bloviating to tell others not to use big words. When people stop arguing a point and start arguing over dictionary definitions of words, then is this not the original meaning of Bloviation? Just talking nonsense and not arguing any meaningful points.

Of course interdict means to impede the flow of (supplies) or hinder the use of a road. What else did you think it meant? You need a picture?

Back on topic : logistics are modelled pretty well in Planetside 1. I hope Planetside 2 also have some similar type of depth to the gameplay rather than just COD/BF style zerging around shooting stuff.



[read on only if interested in english language, grammar and dictionary definitions of stuff.... I expect most people to scroll past this crap]

The use of the suffix -able is derived from ability and produces an adjective meaning 'capable of, suitable for, or deserving of'.
You might not find it in a dictionary with it's suffix but it doesn't mean it is any less valid a way of constructing words in the English language.

'interdict' + '-able' in this post means

an ANT is a supply vehicle capable of being interupted by military operations.

It is capable of being interdicted according to your fifth definition.

Now can we stop being pedants about the terminology used and actually discuss gameplay.

Nothing wrong with my credibility here my friend. Nothing particularly wrong with the use of english. Thanks for the pointers though.

The ANT was sort of alright for a kinda logistics system. But there should be more of them.

1) One ANT able to resupply an entire base that's been fighting for an hour is just not enough. Sometimes that ONE slips through heavy fighting and it's like, "lame". So there should be like 1 ground vehicle supply vehicle per every couple of minutes

2) Players directly driving logistics vehicles is just boring. So it should be AI controlled.

The point of logistics is to properly simulate warfare, otherwise the game is just a mindless shoot em upper with no direction whatsoever, where players only care about killz and statz.

Originally Posted by igster

So the supply of NTU into a facility isn't related to logistics. What is the purpose of an ANT? It is an interdictable resource dispenser taking it from a warpgate (unit of production) into a facility.

What is the lattice? Is it not an interdictable means of supply of benefits to a front line base?

no

Lattice is no-linky no-cappy.

[sgtbjack]

I'm all for artillery(realistic artillery, no)

A paladin like vehicle for each faction(judging from alot of knowledgable posts, I'm not going to explain what a paladin is, I'm sure you guys get it)

Very slow moving vehicle(this puts bridges back into the limelight as current mechanics have sort of reduced the value of bridge battles, i.e. jump packs, squad spawning, tons of spawn points, hovertanks and so on)

Vehicle has a 3 kilometer range at most(if a map is 16k by 16k this keeps artillery from dominating the entire map) with its main gun.

Forward Observer has to give a grid(I don't care if its pulling up a specced map and guestimating, but it should be somewhat challenging)

Artillery has 10 meter radius(so 20 meter kill zone, 30 meter damage area), and artillery is only 75% accurate, meaning the more you fire, and adjust, the more you run the risk of a nasty fratracide incident)

Tank can be two manned, or one manned with driver getting out and manning gun, either way, doesn't matter.

Gun has a 10 second reload, with cert speccing reduction a possibility(so you can cert artillery and get the gun time down to 5 seconds, and maybe larger kill zones)

All of this makes artillery dumb by its self unless your putting down hail mary fire on enemy close to your safe zone, but if you want to push towards the other side of the map, its slow going, and you need volley fire from multiple paladins(I'm an 11b infantryman, and I would love clearing woodlines, ridges, and bridges for enemy to allow artillery to move up)

Something like this would lead too-only very well coordinated factions would ever be able to move them across the map,

Two. They would be much more helpfull when your getting rofl stomped back to your main safe zone, meaning lonewolfers or outnumbered forces could bring artillery out of the safe zone and try to halt by fire the advancing forces.(plus if the only spawn point is your safe zones the closer you get to the enemy's safe zone, the nastier the fight gets.)

I want realistic combat I do, but it won't work.

[Gugabalog]

I like that, plus it still leaves them almost nearly completely open to aircraft.

[Seratooth]

I like this more, than the idea of an orbital strike.
But i would see the artillery more like this:

• Low speed when moving.
• Must be deployed (20 Sek) to shoot
• Need a Infiltrator with a special Cert (Change Scanbolts with GPSbolts)
• Less armored against aircrafts and other tanks
• Can only shoot with GPS Data, and only become the GPS data from nearby zones. (closer than the respawn range)
• the infiltrator and the arty pilot must be in same squad (to reduce GPS dataspam)
• Artillery can only be buyed on artillery terminals, and they should be rare
• Artillery can not shoot out of the warpgate securefield

In this situation the arty is a teamplay vehicle. You have to defend your artillery, if you don't, the enemy aircrafts have some free kills.
And without a Infiltrator at your side, this tank will be useless.


There are 3 kind of artillery strikes:

• VS = Orbital strike - Shoot a beam of high energy to the orbit and reflect him on target. Causes hard damage on a medium arearange, short reloadtime.
• TR = Cluster strike - Shoots a serie of clusterbombs, they spray over the targetzone. Every Cluster causes hard damage on a low arearange, medium reloadtime
• NC = Artillery strike - Shoots a single artillerygrenate, causes hard damage on a high arearange, long reloadtime

i think it's better than a orbital strike with a lasermarker and without many teamplay. it need a good squad to defend your artillery.
The artillery can not be used for rushing, because of the low movingspeed, but if you can defend you artillery, you can turn a long battle to a win.

[Rossum]

Crazy idea:

What if instead of launching explosive rounds, the "artillary" gun launches explosive devices similar to mines or C4?

Like say...

Timed Bomb - Fires an explosive shell that hits the ground before arming and waits about 3 seconds before exploding. It can be diffused by infantry before its time is up,(indicated by flashing and beeping before it explodes).

It has a largish area of effect but its damage is such that infantry with full health, shields, and a rank or two of flak armor can survive a blast. I'm imagining medics acting as bomb diffusal squads. Flak armor to survive the explosion and then healing themselves up in case they miss one (plus revive fallen allies).


Ideally, these would work as area denial mostly in that people can see them and react in time to flee or difuse them before they blow. Fleeing enemy can lose cover to get picked off by allies while those focused on difusing the bombs for XP would be distracted with that and probably get themselves blown up if they fail.

The bombs should have a high-damage but very low area when they first drop (basically killing anyone they land on directly.. maybe decent damage against tanks if they hit dead-on).

The larger explosion is the secondary effect which can be avoided if someone diffuses the bomb. The guy firing the gun can get some XP from the first hit if he has a decent spotter, but the big AOE damage only happens if nobody difuses the bomb in time.

This formula could be altered so the gun launches anti-tank or anti-infantry mines (each one large enough to see and with a delay before arming) which must be disarmed in different ways. Tank mines can be easily disarmed by infantry and only detonate in the presense of vehicles. While anti-infantry mines are dangerous to difuse the normal way, but infiltrators can cloak and 'hack' them or they can just be shot from a distance.

Then, there can be other launched stuff like teleporter pads, radar drones, or whatever.


Thoughts?

[Artimus]

I just would like to see Arillery, the flail was in PS1 bring something like that to PS2

[Plissket]

Originally Posted by OutlawDr

Yep, making artillery a pain in the ass and unenjoyable is not the solution. Making it more 'realistic' doesn't address the standing gameplay issues that people have with artillery. The problem is that its indirect combat with a low skill ceiling that has the potential to deny large groups of players in an area from engaging in actual skilled gameplay. We need to address that first.

I totally agree with this one.

I'd love the idea of artillery being in the game from a realism point of view, but I would hate the idea of people just running around and then exploding because someone 4km away fired a shell randomly at an area. (In PS1 they were generally used to fire at a vehicle terminal over and over and over.....exciting stuff ).

There is nothing players can do against that, so until that bit is fixed I think the idea is dead from a gameplay perspective.

On the same note as artillery PS1's orbital strike is also sucky for the same reasons. With that there is no warning, no Star wars 1 style graphics of the bad guy's spaceship lining up its shot to an area, no increasing drama of the mega weapon about to be used, just a column of light and blat your gone.