1.1.2 or after request

[Dark_au]

Dev team,

Is there a chance you could do something about artillery (mortar carriers mainly not the hurricane). Pre the latest patch these were a lot more deadly. I believe you corrected an error with the damage going through the ground. With the escalated use of AAD very few rounds get through and the ones that do are not enough of a threat. some options may be.

1. Lessen AAD effectiveness or make it more susceptible to target overload

2. Increase the HE yeald

3. Allow for round fusing options such as impact or proximity ( to get air burst rounds)

4. (my fave) allow a higher chance of units bieng flipped by close rounds (ground shock)

5. Limited number of "Smart rounds"

6. Limited number of Anti-personel rounds ( firecrackers if you are Slammers fans)

7. Some form of self propelled Howitzer maybe something on the thor chassis with the Ontos idea. Only equiped with 120mm or 76mm ( or 155mm ) HE rounds for semi indirect fire.

8. Sci-Fi Version of a Katyusha

9. Allow grouping of bot driven Mobile artillery into human controlled salvo's

[Novum]

aye... Rocket arty whould be wery cool.. and an effective anti infatry/light vehicle weapon =)

[Alexander SquidLord Williams]

Sounds like my kind of role.

"Uh, guys, I'll be parked back here with my rocket rack. Feel free to call in coords. And please and kindly stay at least 500m from the target at all times."

A weapon whose accuracy is not only suspect, its not important. Perfect for me!

[Dark_au]

I was thinking mainly of the BM-21 2 of those pouring 40 rockets apiece at a defencive position would be more than any AAD could handle you'd hope. With realistic reload times it wouldnt be too overpowered. Have 2 launch modes, ripple and salvo.

I like the Ontos idea too though. 6x 76mm HE in either ripple or Salvo mode. Not hugely deadly but enough to make people wince and to keep the AAD busy.

[yurch]

Originally posted by Dark_au:

I believe you corrected an error with the damage going through the ground.

And armor it wasn't supposed to. The Mortars! we've been using are actually fairly puny in terms of stats.

I somewhat like the need to hit directly or fairly close to the target. The problem is our mortar units can't do it enough to justify thier deployment.

Increasing "yield" is a really sensitive issue.

Right now if I were to increase the front/side/top/bottom armor on the tempest by adding a single point to each, it will become immune to any mortar landing in front or to the side of it. It's easy to go the other way, too, and have Thors popping like shrikes whenever a mortar lands in the same neighborhood, which certainly isn't fun.

The two options I'd like to see for the mortar carriers are increases in accuracy and volume. They don't really have a problem killing or disabling light units or infantry, but the trick is getting the round to land anywhere near a speeding shrike or guessing where that squad is hiding.

Having some missile launcher that dumps off 40 missiles at a time is going to be totally overpowered with our drop options. Reload time and retaliation isn't a factor when you're dropping a fresh launcher anywhere you want, unloading everything, and extracting afterward. I suspect this is why the shrike is this way already. If the devs wanted us to have that kind of artillery firepower on a regular basis they should just give the fire mission a 2 minute reload...

My primary concern is to make the mortar carriers as every bit as useful and diverse as the other classes.

So, here's my list of unreasonable demands:

Targeting:

1: Time to hit indicator by the crosshair. Will make leading much easier.

2: Some form of efficient teammate based targeting.

Ammunition:

3: A (additional?) slightly lower-impluse cartridge than what we have already for close-in situations, and for those low-gravity maps.

4: The ammo selection bug needs to go. It might just be best to let us choose our own ammo at any time, may as well have something else to do besides fiddle with our rangefinder.

5: A seperating cluster-type round for attacking light targets and/or defeating point defense. Low seperation degree. This might be related to dark's firecracker thing, I'm not familiar with the various works of fiction being referenced. Obviously this will have a lower yield. It might be a good idea to match this with #9.

6: I'm starting to lean towards some very limited guidance (presumably, like the yellow ATGM) in a select ammo type.

7: The way the mortar classes are seperated is odd. Having all three types with the same shrapnel penetration but with different cutoff distances is somewhat unintuitive I guess. Paladin's is probably too small if it's going to be fired with the same accuracy of the other two.

8: These vehicles likely have the lowest ammo-capacity-to-kill ratio in the game. Some more wouldn't hurt.

Other:

9: Point defense turrets (galaxy and hermes) at the moment appear to be rated high enough to be immune to shrapnel, making a high speed ball-mount more survivable than many of the other turret stylings. I'm in favor of bumping the armorings of these down to actually be threatened by shrapnel. You'll still need to find where they are in order to properly attack them with a cluster.

10: Another weapon, like a coaxial, would be very useful for the carrier's survival.

[Dark_au]

I guess I prefer to leave the acuracy the same but up the threat level. Artillery's main role should be to supress and terrify the enemy with the risk of exposure.

[Dark_au]

I guess you are right on the MRLS I can see it becoming as easily abusable as other things are.

I much prefer and Ontos style concept myself. 6x 76mm or 4 x 76mm with say 20 rounds of HE per gun. It would be a great supression weapon for AAD.

[aittam]

1.1.2 is already n packaging phase I believe since I've seen a server running it.

Rockets or multiple artillery: I do agree, especially for the saturating capability, the cons -> who's gonna use light mortars then? unless a clear cutting difference in ammo ranges is introduced along with the spotting capability for infantry those things will just accumulate spider(cosmic)-webs on the cargo bays of live ships

Hurricane type of artillery should lack guidance, they are deadly enough, if you want to come closer than ctrl-m fire that's at your

own risk; anyways they can saturated every corner of the map

problem arising with rockets-> they may become, with a galaxy sitting nearby, an abusable thing so: long reload time, enough to let noobs think twice before throw a salvo just for the sake of it; limited availability, just a couple, a well organised team (two ppl are enough) to keep a deadly rotation between spotter and gunner-> one calls fire and extracts, the gunners saturate the area and extract; they invert their role; one dropping close to the combat zone the other going back with rocket launcher, a team

of three could saturate the area w/o problems, especially if the spotter is on a command vehicle

only two spotters: command vehicles and a dedicated light infantry class

ammunition: light/medium mortars should be able to use sub ammo and mines ammo

[yurch]

I would love an Ontos style platform. I was even trying to get a thor to kind of do that earlier - but you can't "link" weapons with the XML right now as things are.

The problem is, 76mm HE is a pretty anaemic caliber lately. It's no longer feasable to take out buildings with that caliber, and not many combat targets fall under the armor range it's capable of defeating, including dropships and point defense units. Using AP kind of defeats it's purpose as an artillery piece and requires it to get fairly close...

Given a blast on it's HE though, and it would shred tires, infantry, shrikes and deployables. Things that certainly need shredding lately - I think it would make a good support weapon for the opening attack.

Aittam: A long range piece with that kind of firepower is problematic with our dropping capability. Imagine every time you kill a guy, he drops a rocketlauncher for his next unit and has 40 rockets incoming to your position within 20 seconds or so of you killing him. The same is true with say an EMP or a Fire mission, but these are offered once every 10 minutes or more, and don't require a player to actively spend time doing the launching.

Such an artillery piece could make a good permanent unit, either manned or automated, that the objective could revolve around. A sort of VIP escort mission. The hard part would be finding a way to hide it in deployment so the other team doesn't find it right off the bat.

[Caseck]

ONTOS was 6x106mm recoilless rifles for the uninformed...

I just had to add that in there to set the baseline. It also had a .50 cal spotting rifle, ballistically matched to the guns.