Drop Tactic has some flaws in its thinking.

[Dark_au]

Gday,

I think there are a couple of fundamental flaws in the Base tactic as used in the game.

Firstly why do you need a unit on the ground to call for artillery?. Surely the best way to prep a dropzone is with a heavy bombardment of arty followed by an emp strike just before the landing. Then drop a force to secure the dropzone while any local defences are impaired.

Secondly why drop your "good" units first. First wave is expendible like pawns in chess. This is what recon and scout units are for. The first thing that should drop in is light fast units to get in and further cause chaos whilst heavier elements come in behind. The bots all drop in the good equipment straight away. and there isn't a way to stop them it seems.

[yurch]

You can specify drop unit type and location for the bots. Select thier name and hit the 'drop' button, which is next to 'observe' and 'orders' in the tacmap. The downside is that is much safer to let the bots choose the area themselves - ordering a drop in one location will mean the bot will do it over and over until the inventory is exausted. You have to specify an area if you want a specific drop type, unfortunately.

The bots generally can't fight very well with anything but the thor. They can't drive at high speeds, rarely manuver properly, and lack the fire discipline to use shorter ranged weapons.

[ClaytoniousRex]

Surely the best way to prep a dropzone is with a heavy bombardment of arty followed by an emp strike just before the landing. Then drop a force to secure the dropzone while any local defences are impaired.

Definitely a good idea. Land a command track a good 8 or 9 kilometers from the objective, target your artillery, and then extract. Follow up with appropriate forces when ready. It's not an unreasonable policy to require a final set of eyes on target before committing to the expense of a fire mission especially when it's so easy and relatively low risk (if executed properly) to the forward observer.

Secondly why drop your "good" units first. First wave is expendible like pawns in chess.

How very Soviet. If this is your plan, then order it. Tell the bots to drop light units first and then switch them over to heavies later on.

[Dark_au]

sure but there needs to be a way to tell the bots not to drop yet it that case.

[ClaytoniousRex]

Yes, we need a global "Hold Drops" toggle that the commander can use to stop everyone on his team from dropping until he clears the toggle. On top of this, we plan to add a per-player toggle (but the global one would override it).

In the meantime, you can drop your bots in a remote location and leave them idle (select them all and hit alt-s). Assign their forward drop locations and when the area is prepped, window select them all and extract (alt-x). Now they'll all drop together at the designated landing area(s).

[cool breeze]

Great trick ClaytoniousRex. Thanks for the tip! Looking forward to trying it.

[poesel]

Hmm, how about that: what if the chosen commander would be the ONLY one who could drop units - players, bots, everything?

Quite some work for him to do but imagine the resulting gameplay!

[aittam]

Originally posted by poesel71:

Hmm, how about that: what if the chosen commander would be the ONLY one who could drop units - players, bots, everything?

Quite some work for him to do but imagine the resulting gameplay!

it's soundy poesel but is gonna work only if all the players are really playing to achieve the objective (seeing the greater good and the fun of acting like a squad), yesterday night somebody was camping 20 feet from my flag, I got killed 7 or 8 times but I got their flag twice; what would you get from such a player even in a massive deployment?

oh btw the real power of a command vehicle coupled to a viper haven't really been explored yet, when the beta was running I remeber breat actions done by a duo team with a viper and a ground unit

[dan/california]

Their is a very simple way to make people more careful with dropships, limit their number. Once people run out once or twice and watch the remnants of their forces decimated they will be much more careful with them.

You could even have an intermediate step where drop request take much longer to fill after a certain # of dropship losses.

In real life any vehicle capable of ground to orbit transportation in would be orders of magnitude more expensive than almost any conceivable ground combat vehicle. Their availability should reflect this.

[cool breeze]

i am also very interested in trying some kind of dropship limited senerio, preferably with the delay after limit, not the cut off limit. Ive always felt it odd that the dropships are despossible compared to the vehicle. i know it costs my team points, but i have never treally minded my dropship blowing up after the drop. The dropships look and seem more expensive than vehicles.