Changes needed game command system and more.

[Canaris]

Originally Posted by Livefire

I would guess those are the half that did not play PS1 and simple do not understand it and how it is used and fits very nicely in this type of large scale MMOFPS.

I'm a 10 year veteran of PS1 and I'm not at all keen to see OS make a come back.

[Shogun]

Originally Posted by psijaka

Never played PS1 but OS sounds like a very zero skill and frustrating way to die if it was spammed that often.

Calling a strike needs to cost a LOT in resources; I would suggest that it costs thousands of resources of all types, shared between the entire squad. That way, only someone who is leading a full or nearly full squad can call a strike, and calling the strike will deplete the resources of everyone in the squad, which could have consequences. There's got to be a negative to such a powerful weapon.

in ps1 once you had access to os, you could use it for free with a cooldowntimer of an hour or two. it took a lot of time to get the access, but once everybody had it, it became too common.
it was used with a weaponlike tool that when fired switched to the mapview and you could set a waypoint, where the strike would come down.

no skill needed as long as you could translate first person view to maplocation. when fired, there was a sort of warning sound, a beam from the sky and 3-4 seconds later the deathbeam. so there was a chance to run to safety if you were aware and fast enough.
no chance to escape with a deployed ams or as a max or anything slow.
but it had a radius of several meters maybe 20 or so, so hitting an ams (the spawnsunderer of ps1) was a guaranteed kill of a load of enemies.

but in ps2 the strikes were kind of useful in the beginning. to get rid of an ams that could not be killed otherwise when it was defended or most of your soldiers were contained in a base and sealed off from the ams.
in ps2, you respawn at a warpgate, get an esf and rocketpod away any sunderer on the map in under a minute.
there is no unit in the game that needs to be destroyed by orbital strike because everything in the game is made from thin glass.
an ams in ps1 could take a lot of tankshells until it would blow up. and it would cloak when deployed, making it hard to find or hit sometimes. so when you saw a strange group of soldiers in the fields, you put down an orbital to check if there was a cloaked ams.

[ringring]

When I first started playing PS1 OS's were used mostly to farm easy kills. If you were standing by a vehicle term there was maybe a 1 chance in 4 that some nearby enemy cloaker would fire of an os onto the folk waiting to pull a vehicle. 20 kills easily.

Later on it became a tactical weapon. Someone in your squad would identify an AMS, which was cloaked and you'd work together to put the OS to destroy it onto the right place.

I'd hardly every be killed by an OS personally because I could simply run in the oterh direction and as an OS user I don't think I got many kills from it, maybe 15 at best buy mostly it was around 5-6.

But, this whole OS discussion shows why it needs to be decoupled from command, if it returns. Treat it as if it's a more colourful artillery strike and discuss it from there.

However to the OP.
I don't agree limiting access to command to current squad commanders is a good thing. Relating this back to PS1, often the most valuable input came from those who weren't leading. Squad leaders often concentrate on the small scale, the battle immediately in front of them. Commanders should concentrate on the larger picture.

There's also the question of Intel. If you have a base hacked and you need to know the situation it would be good to have a commander there who can take the time to scout it out and report.

Lastly, and again speaking from PS1 experience. As a CR5 I'd lead squads and platoons a lot more than most but many times too I'd want to take a break. You're saying on those times I wouldn't have access to the new cr5 channel and that even though I am not leading in squad play I can't contribute to the overall global strategy. That doesn't sound good to me.

[Livefire]

Originally Posted by ringring

When I first started playing PS1 OS's were used mostly to farm easy kills. If you were standing by a vehicle term there was maybe a 1 chance in 4 that some nearby enemy cloaker would fire of an os onto the folk waiting to pull a vehicle. 20 kills easily.

Later on it became a tactical weapon. Someone in your squad would identify an AMS, which was cloaked and you'd work together to put the OS to destroy it onto the right place.

I'd hardly every be killed by an OS personally because I could simply run in the oterh direction and as an OS user I don't think I got many kills from it, maybe 15 at best buy mostly it was around 5-6.

But, this whole OS discussion shows why it needs to be decoupled from command, if it returns. Treat it as if it's a more colourful artillery strike and discuss it from there.

However to the OP.
I don't agree limiting access to command to current squad commanders is a good thing. Relating this back to PS1, often the most valuable input came from those who weren't leading. Squad leaders often concentrate on the small scale, the battle immediately in front of them. Commanders should concentrate on the larger picture.

There's also the question of Intel. If you have a base hacked and you need to know the situation it would be good to have a commander there who can take the time to scout it out and report.

Lastly, and again speaking from PS1 experience. As a CR5 I'd lead squads and platoons a lot more than most but many times too I'd want to take a break. You're saying on those times I wouldn't have access to the new cr5 channel and that even though I am not leading in squad play I can't contribute to the overall global strategy. That doesn't sound good to me.

No as a solo commander in rank you would have full access to the communication channels of other commanders just not access to address everyone on the cont/global and when the OS comes out you would not be able to use that unless you are leading a squad. Remember it is not your OS it is your empires and should be used as such. Each CR5 should not have his personal OS satellite but simple have access to your empires global defense system which lets you request one from your empire when you think you need it. That request should "under certain circumstances" be denied unlike in PS1.