[Suggestion] What about....Long Ranged Artillery?

Before you even think about this freaking awesome idea, get rid of the premise that something you can't see killing you is always bad. Also, play something besides infantryside. Infantry are and always will be hugely vulnerable to AI weapons on vehicles. Fact of life.

Now, with that out of the way.....

Let's make a deployable artillery vehicle with a range at the render distance. Huge arc, hard to use, etc. We'll add different shells (AP rounds for vehicle killers, flak canisters for infantry, smoke rounds for the lols). We'll add weird scopes for aiming the thing. Big perk: It will have low damage. Not insta kill BS. Just low damage. In addition, it will take at least two people to use. One driver, one Gunner.

But why?

Why add more AOE to the spam fest?

Because we need a reason to be out in the open field more. Those big open plains battles are among the best in Planetside, imho - most everyone gets in some sort of vehicle and starts fighting for the middle ground. It's epic. It's in between bases. And when it happens between two similarly sized tank columns, the effects are pretty awesome. And using the artillery to force the fight onto the open areas between bases (where the artillery's range advantage is mitigated by open vision) is a cool way to do this.

The Zerg also needs a counter of some sort that doesn't involve NUKE THE ROAD. Imagine artillery squads of 3-4 arty tanks ambushing a tank column with some well-place rounds from 400m away, ripping through their tightly-packed hulls and halting the push.

Not only will it make commanders think more tactically in fights, it will add some purpose to those furious air battles above the field - kill the enemy artillery before they ambush your friends.

Things about the Arty that make it worth using:

Hella long range. High AOE on everything, eventually will kill something.
Arcing shells over the battlefield like a badass.

The Cons:

Low Damage
Two folks needed
Deploy to fire.
No AA
Hard to aim accurately, moderate accuracy penalty for rapidfire shots.
Easy to see because those arcing shells are pretty obvious.

What do you think? I know people hated the Tank AOE spam of early release, but since most bases are fought under roofs, the artillery shouldn't have a huge effect in those beloved infantry fights.

Without even getting into the issues of adding Flails into the game (PS1's long range arty vehicle)or how they would balance, you have a game engine problem. These would likely just end up falling into the same category as Engie AV turrets.. the category called "Stuff that isn't rendering but is killing me anyway".

omegaold idea but still popularly desired.
Could have someone place smoke, a new beacon, fire a flaregun or something and have that be the only valid target to fire at.
User drives out the arty vehicle, deploys it, gets its targeting radius shown on radar and map.
The targeting item is created by another user.
If it's in radius of the arty vehicle, that user selects whichever target and fires.

Major differences between the two:

First, the Artillery would only be able to fire to the render distance. It can only hit what it can see, and since it's a vehicle, infantry will see it before it sees them. Problem solved there.

Second, Engie AV turrets are precision weapons. Guided missiles. These are unguided shells with the a higher skill floor to land accurately because the arc is so huge (it won't be a direct fire weapon anyway).

The game engine just needs to put a limit on how far the projectile can travel - which it does already at the render distance. I'd also rather have a dev come in here and confirm if the engine can do this or not - it could be either way tbh.

Artillery - for when you can't position your tank in line of sight of the spawn room.

Since when was the spawn room a major part of any battle?

It also won't be some tank shell lobbing artillery. It won't be insta kill like HE is.

You always start in a spawn room. (Unless it's on an AMS unit. That doesn't even have a roof to save you if it's not a squad spawn.)
And don't change the subject. This is the kind of weapon that will be positioned in a tricky to engage position and will be aimed towards all of the areas exiting the spawn building.

Your scenario suggest four artillery platforms. If four artillery platforms lobbing consecutive shells don't saturate with enough AOE death that things end up hurt to the point of death just trying to get past it or just dead outright, then artillery isn't worth implementing at all.

In zerg fights infantry renders at 10 m.. and i dont know how it will be work, but there aircraft, and during spawn room spam, you will TK some of ESFs

Server Engine limit is 300 render distance for infantry. 500 for ground vehicles.

That's not long enough for long range artillery. Hand Held rockets and tank cannons already fill the role of 'long' range based on those limitations.

Sounds like a great addition, after the PS1 AMS and spitfires to take the focus off the fixed spawn points, and it isn't mobile artillery that can back up into the warpgate or behind a shield at the first sign of trouble like cheesers did in PS1 with the flail.

Wouldnt pulling a lightning or mbt be faster and better in every way?
Sure it has range and aoe, but if it just kills something "eventually" then it sounds like a really unrewarding job.

Even the Flail in PS1 that insta-killed was boring to use, because you were so far back (the shot gained strength the longer it traveled) that you couldnt see anything.
Sometimes you go a kill and sometimes you didnt. You had no way to aim and had to guess where it would hit, or have someone going "No, thats not right. 0.002mm to the left. No thats WAY off"
But i digress.

Would be fun to see artillery ingame, but i dont know if i would be using it in any real situation.

"Off-board" artillery called in by squad leaders would be a better Idea IF and only IF the bases weren't so close together.

As it is, most bases are within range of each others turrets let alone the 30 or so MBT's found in the average zerg.

You want to add even more farming potential during a base siege?

How about not suggesting things that has been suggested 99 times before?

If it's anything like World of Tanks artillery, no. No no no no no.

No?

No.

Game has enough snipers, don't need a vehicle-based Finger of God to annihilate you with impunity from cover. On the other hand, allowing certain facilities to give commanders some "support" options might be interesting, if it were done correctly. Give some rewards for playing the map game.

A prowler with lockdown already fills this niche

Grab a liberator with a zephyr or dalton, point is sideways at render range or beyond, press mouse button.

Tanks to their own esfs all the time. For crying out loud, I had a harasser ramp jump in front of one my AV rockets yesterday. I hit him midair and basically killed him.
And yes, large fights with weird render distances will lessen its usefulness, but that's a good thing, at least for the infantry farmers.

3-4 SPGs = 6-8 people = 6-8 AV turrets, or 6 AV MAXes with an engy and medic for support.
Both are effective vs tank zergs.

I won't even mention what 6-8 hull down AP Anchored Prowlers can do, even at 600-700 meters.

From 400 meters away the SPG's would be bombed back into the stone age by tanks, even if the tankers can't shoot straight.
AV turrets can be placed, fired and abandoned instantly, while MAXes can be revived and repaired easily.

In other words, there already are tools for this job, which are very, very effective.

For those who want indirect firing artillery, have a squad leader mark targets with the WP, run 2 ammo Sundies with 2x Bulldogs.
That's a 5 person team which can lock down even a pretty populated spawn bunker from the safety of being behind a hill.

EDIT: Final note - if the SPG requires a driver AND deployment to work, it'll be either one player doing absolutely nothing, or the other one.

We don't need another farming tool.

After playing games like BF3 and 4 that had mortars and artillery, hell effing freaking ever never NO NO NO and everlasting NO! Like as much as I love outfits and playing in them for the extra amount of power that gives us, freaking artillery would obliterate any opposition a non outfit group could ever muster.
Not to mention, we already have enough tanks and infiltrators that sit their *** down and farm, we do not need to give those people more reasons to be useless towards an interesting and epic game.