Orbital Strike and PS2 - Page 4

Immigrant · 2012-05-29, 11:30 AM

Originally Posted by Hypevosa

I'd say a 1/continent/day limit would be good. Give people a reason to travel and all that.

First of all that could mean that zerg people could waste strikes on useless objectives and take them away from those who coordinate actions where they would truly matter. Second this would encourage empire hopping to waste enemies strikes to reach that limit and prevent them from using OSs.

Originally Posted by Gandhi

Here's another idea. OS satellites have a limited number of uses, they have to be replaced after being fired X times. To replace one a special mission appears in the mission system, people who are certed for OS can pick up this mission which requires them to supply Y resources. After Z total resources are gathered from W players a new satellite is launched and each player who filled his "resource quota" is given an OS to use.

This makes it easy for SOE to influence the number of OS's on the battlefield simply by changing the availability of the missions.

This sounds good to me.

Hamma · 2012-05-29, 12:26 PM

Orbital Strikes were on the agenda in our community interview with Higby. Should be up late tomorrow.

IMMentat · 2012-05-29, 05:57 PM

More info is always good.

I have an idea on how to balance an OS.

Anyone within a squad, including the leader (or players with special permission from the leader) can mark a location by applying a targeting laser, lobbing a destroyable GPS sticky? "grenade" or use themselves as ground-zero. Sacrifice will only work on live characters who must remain stationary and visible for 3-5 seconds before the OS could be centered on their location after which they can move away without disrupting the marker. Only 2-3 markers should be plantable at a time per squad.

The leader of a squad of 3 active players minimum (2 active spare accounts are not common) with whatever leadership cert is required to call in the OS would then choose one a marker to attack. At this point the #spotlight of doom# should show up for friendlies warning them that someone intends to "nuke" the area. The OS can then be triggered and

Each 100 (or whatever) meter area can only take 2 OS' per 3-10 minutes and the entire squad should be unable to call in another OS for a minimum of 1 hour regardless of who called it in.
Maybe have a default re-use of 2-3 hours with reductions to recast based on having more players in the squad, having other players in-squad with the OS certification and for avoiding friendly fire.

To encourage more tactical use, players killed by OS should reward zero XP and should not contribute to the callers K/D ratio.

Warborn · 2012-05-29, 08:06 PM

Originally Posted by Mechzz

Yeah, I have to say I'm surprised at the depth of anti-OS feeling. Maybe because I played in an era when they were still something special rather than a regular occurrence on the battlefield.

I played from Planetside 1 from beta through to a few months after BFRs came out. I think I've seen the spectrum. Even when orbital strikes were rare I thought they were stupid. Why should someone be able to wipe out the hard work of some AMS driver who got his AMS to a base, setup CE, and actively defended it? In what circumstances is it ever okay for one player to literally push a button and kill people via an intangible thing that nobody can defend against? This isn't about people not understanding orbital strikes because they aren't Ye Olde Tyme veterans of Planetside 1. It's people seeing a bad, stupid gameplay gimmick for what it is.

Although, that said, they kind of made a certain sense in PS1. In that game bases with a proper attack going on would have numerous AMSs setup all around the area, plus the tower. Repelling an attack basically didn't happen, you just held on, but rarely you could eliminate all enemy spawns, sometimes using orbital strikes coordinated with tower drops. So in a very cheap way they did kinda address an issue with PS1. But it was a band-aid for a bullet wound. The real issue was that attackers essentially did not lose an attack, it just took hours and hours sometimes. So the ideal solution is to make combat naturally not so stagnant without resorting to stuff that just sucks in every other circumstance.

Purple · 2012-05-29, 08:39 PM

Originally Posted by Hamma

Orbital Strikes were on the agenda in our community interview with Higby. Should be up late tomorrow.

late like 11am or 11pm?

Hamma · 2012-05-29, 09:31 PM

Not sure yet

Graywolves · 2012-05-29, 09:50 PM

Originally Posted by Hamma

Not sure yet

I saw you/jenny playing a VS.

If you know what's good for your reputation in the Terran Republic, you'll upload that ASAP!!!! #Blackmail

I like the OS, I just think it gets rediculous when you have 5 of them consecutively.

One of the things that made me angry in MAG was that when I did get leadership I had to sit and spam the button for a strategic asset before any of the other leaders did or else my squad would have to struggle a little more even longer. So I'm not interested in an Empire-wide cooldown.

We'll find up what's going on with the OS tomorrow, I presume.

Hamma · 2012-05-29, 10:35 PM

I wanted to play TR - but it was an NC VS playtest

SixShooter · 2012-05-29, 11:08 PM

Originally Posted by Sledgecrushr

My vote is no on orbital strikes.

This.

I think that there will already be more than enough ways to kill/be killed.

Mechzz · 2012-05-30, 05:25 AM

Originally Posted by Warborn

I played from Planetside 1 from beta through to a few months after BFRs came out. I think I've seen the spectrum. Even when orbital strikes were rare I thought they were stupid. Why should someone be able to wipe out the hard work of some AMS driver who got his AMS to a base, setup CE, and actively defended it? In what circumstances is it ever okay for one player to literally push a button and kill people via an intangible thing that nobody can defend against? This isn't about people not understanding orbital strikes because they aren't Ye Olde Tyme veterans of Planetside 1. It's people seeing a bad, stupid gameplay gimmick for what it is.

Although, that said, they kind of made a certain sense in PS1. In that game bases with a proper attack going on would have numerous AMSs setup all around the area, plus the tower. Repelling an attack basically didn't happen, you just held on, but rarely you could eliminate all enemy spawns, sometimes using orbital strikes coordinated with tower drops. So in a very cheap way they did kinda address an issue with PS1. But it was a band-aid for a bullet wound. The real issue was that attackers essentially did not lose an attack, it just took hours and hours sometimes. So the ideal solution is to make combat naturally not so stagnant without resorting to stuff that just sucks in every other circumstance.

That makes sense Warborn, I even post against the idea of "I win" weapons myself. I think the reason the OS doesn't inspire similar thoughts is that it had a local, short-term effect and if I was quick or lucky I could run away. Also, the loss of one AMS wasn't the end of the world when pops were high. Sometimes it gave me the ability to deploy 1 of the 4 or 5 that were standing about unable to deploy due to the number of deployed units

ZeroOneZero · 2012-05-30, 05:52 AM

OS weren't that bad in PS1. I don't think they will be a problem in PS2, seeing how the maps are larger and battles will be widespread. OS's will keep you on your toes. Only stationary targets or slow moving targets are vulnerable to OS's. They are fairly predictable as well. *Ohh look! 100+ ppl in one place!! I smell an OS coming!* seriously ppl, they aren't that bad.

Aaramus · 2012-05-30, 06:11 AM

How about reducing the amount of damage that the OS does? From what I've read in this thread they seem to be incredibly powerful. Obviously they wouldn't be seen as useful if they were nerfed into the ground, but perhaps they should be made as more of an artillery bombardment that is used to cause damage but also prevent infantry/tank movements near a base.

Also maybe make them be high end rewards for Outfits that perform well by completing key missions.

kadrin · 2012-05-30, 07:16 AM

Didn't read the whole thread so forgive me if this was mentioned.

Why not have the cost of the OS scale with resources available? Say it costs 500 whatever normally, but as you play and start acquiring a nice stockpile of that particular resource, the cost of the OS increases as well. Maybe when you have 3,000 of that resource the cost is now upped to 2,000. (Throwing numbers out for idea, ignore them, they can easily be balanced later).

So no matter how many resources you have, it is still a significant investment on the part of the player to call one down.

Just a thought, tear it apart please.

Marinealver · 2012-05-30, 12:24 PM

What there to be annoyed about, just about every 10 minuets someone OS cools down and can hit the nearest enemy vehicle pad and kill the line of people waiting for vehicles.

Well anyways to be honest I wish it was more like a laze pointer instead of a wp tracking system.

Also I wouldn't mind if there were some logistical support needed for Orbital Strikes like have your empire get an OS satelite in orbit.

Soothsayer · 2012-05-30, 12:44 PM

make it a 25 frag killstreak reward.

I think that most people will generally be okay with that.

Ofc joking and knowing full well the reaction that this will get, stating this so that said reaction is not necessary.

Really, it's not that big of a deal to me whether or not Orbital Strikes are in. On the one hand they are an iconic thing from the original planetside, the degree to which depends on when you played planetside in, but on the other hand, they are so prolific now that the significance of the orbital strike is almost entirely diminished.

Epic things become less epic the more common they are. Subsequent epic things have to raise the bar. There's this whole economy when it comes to creating epic experiences that the gaming industry doesn't fully understand yet.