[Suggestion] Artillery!

Discussion in 'PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Discussion' started by Alexkruchev, Aug 11, 2015.

  1. Alexkruchev

    Indirect fire weapons have been a mainstay of modern armies and pre modern armies. No general worth his salt would go to battle without some kind of artillery avaliable, that isn't limeted by LOS.

    Why then, in a futuristic shooter with strangely modern vehicle design philosophies, do we have absolutely no artillery?!

    Here's a post I pulled from one of Camikaze78's recent video's comment section:


    What are your thoughts?!
    • Up x 1
  2. Demigan

    You could just implement anti-farm methods based on skill instead.

    No large AOE's, no map-clicking artillery. Even a 1000m range artillery would work relatively well. Shooting at a Spawnroom with a long travel time between your shot and it landing will mean that you can hit only with pure luck. Try the following: get an HE Prowler and sit at 300m distance of a Spawnroom, close your eyes and shoot randomly at a doorway. Then see how many kills you'll get. Once you figured out you'll get next to no kills you'll realize that if you add artillery shells with a maximum AOE the size of HE shells would be pretty balanced.

    Add the ability to track where your shots landed. Through radar and map where you'll see where your last X shots landed (certable) to getting a window at the top of your screen showing the shell as it travels (also certable). Give players the ability to designate targets for artillery.
    Then add firing in volleys rather than single-shot. You can fire a volley, then have a long reload. This way you can quickly dial in on a target, but the targets have a long time in between to disappear/repair/counter you.
    Add some special abilities/special ammo. A Camera-guided shell that you can slightly change the course off for better hitting. A cluster-bomb that you can detonate at any point for a shotgun-spread across the area, detonating earlier will mean a larger spread and more.

    To beat the render-range, you could make all shells server-controlled like mines. Alternatively you can give away control of the artillery. You deploy it and any player with a laser designator (which classes can use it is up for grabs) can laser targets. The player is visible and needs to laser for a short time. This is one way to balance out the LOS advantage: by forcing a player to be in LOS of the target before it can be used.

    Direct balancing can be done by giving it low health, large tracers and long-range auto-detection for easy finding and destroying it. Low ammo could also help as a balancing factor, as well as being pushed into a support role by making aiming difficult unless other players designate targets.
  3. Ronin Oni

    Well, all the team leads who priorly objected are gone....

    but the dev stance heretofore has been that the last thing the game needs is people dying to crap they can't directly combat against without needing someone else to dive behind enemy lines to get at it.

    Want "artillery" bombardment? You best brave some AA fire and do it in a Lib then.... or get some LoS in a tank.

    There's ALSO the issue that you cannot hit what is not rendered (for you)
    • Up x 2
  4. Ronin Oni

    INB4 Chingles mile long post of 300 examples of IRL artillery pieces with a footnote of 500 AA tanks that would make air useless



    :p (just havin a giggle mate)
    • Up x 5
  5. ColonelChingles

    Oh ho! Thought you could predict what I was going to do, eh?

    [IMG]

    [IMG]

    [IMG]

    [IMG]

    [IMG]

    [IMG]

    [IMG]

    Mwahahahaha...

    No, I totally was gonna do what you said I was gonna do when I first saw this thread.
    • Up x 8
  6. Haquim

    Seeing as you always complain about the Dalton being the most effective AA weapon....

    I assume the Anteater is a FLAK in clever disguise?
    • Up x 2
  7. Scr1nRusher

    That "dev" is no longer in the company.
    • Up x 1
  8. Taemien

    One of two things needs to happen before this discussion can go forward:

    1. Render ranger extended to 1200m or more.
    2. We are capable of damaging targets that do not render.

    Without one of those, artillery is a useless discussion as they will be limited to the range of current weapons. Ironically current weapons such as MBT cannons, Lightning Cannons, Bulldogs, and Furies become excellent artillery weapons if we're capable damaging past the 400m limit for infantry, and 600m for vehicles. Their potential is limited by the rendering issue.
  9. ColonelChingles

    I made this post about possible new ammo for artillery:

    Though flak rounds weren't in that list... but they totally should have been!

    I've tried it before... and none of them (except the Fury) really have a good enough arc for indirect fire. I was testing it out against enemy tanks in the VR, and really only the Fury was capable of hitting things indirectly.

    [IMG]

    This is pretty much where you have to aim to hit a tank 250m away. Aim higher, and your 60mm mortar shell just sails off into the distance. :p Those weapons are just far too flat in order to be able to aim up into the sky and have it fall naturally.
  10. Dudeman325420

    I think we learned in PS1 that artillery is incredibly boring, and can only either be overpowered or useless. I don't think it has a place in the arcade-style shooter that PS2 is.
  11. Taemien


    250m for an indirect shot is too close. I can fire a 40mm grenade from a M203 through a window at 300m. I'd expect artillery or anything acting like artillery should be able to go at LEAST out to 1000m.

    Hence the requirements I said before.

    Render things out to 1200m. Or allow us to cause damage beyond what renders.
  12. CipherNine

    Indirect fire weapons would be 10 times worse than pre-nerf HE Prowlers. I assure you that majority of infantry players wouldn't appreciate getting farmed by vehicles they can't even see.

    Artillery that could work would be direct fire vehicles with extremely high splash damage, low projectile speed, low health and low speed. Essentially glass cannons which have to expose themselves to enemy fire and thus require dedicated engineers to keep them alive.
    • Up x 1
  13. Haquim

    That's exactly the opposite of how artillery works.

    And believe me, unless it is extremely accurate* or some genius has the idea to deactivate friendly fire artillery will never be the problem the "infantery only" crowd predicts.
    Well except for the NC one - Teamkilling seems to be some kind of sport over there according to the forums.

    *I'd say the shell should deviate about 10% of the distance travelled. Assuming artillery and target are on the same plane, and the shell is REALLY high-explosive with about 8m explosions (radius).
    To add a little math for those who can't imagine it: That means if the artillery is 100m away (pretty close) the shell will land anywhere in a 314m² area. With 8m explosions = 201 m² that means you still have a 1 in 3 chance to not be touched by the explosion at all, even if the artillery knows exactly where you are and is only 100 m away.
    Actually sounds too weak for me now that I've done the math, considering you can get rid of it with a wraith flash that has a HA passenger....
    • Up x 1
  14. CipherNine

    By whose definition of artillery? Artillery simply means large caliber gun. Indirect fire isn't necessary condition to call something artillery.

    Pre-nerf HE Prowlers wouldn't be problematic either if only players were smart enough to spawn AV tanks instead of defending as infantry. Thing is most players insist on playing as infantry-only and devs have pretty much decided to balance the game around this fact (hence vehicle lethality against infantry was continuously nerfed).

    Personally I'd love indirect fire artillery but I know that it just won't happen because devs would have to reverse their entire balancing philosophy. Casuals want to play CoD style infantry and they don't like the idea of having to deal with vehicles.

    Infantry generally dislikes dealing with vehicles because they have large HP pool and because they can simply fall back to cover and repair to full health. Only way to make infantry vs vehicle enjoyable to infantry is:
    a) Direct fire weapons so infantry don't have to spend huge amount of time finding artillery
    b) Low HP pool and low speed so vehicles can't simply fall back to cover and repair once they start getting damage.

    In other words, artillery needs to be glass cannon which can only survive if it is being supported by friendly infantry. Artillery needs to kill a lot of infantry but it also needs to die a lot to infantry.
  15. Shatteredstar

    Part of the issue is base design really. Look at the fits and complaints that occur with Indar bases sometimes with the spawn rooms getting shelled, look at how people complained about things like PPA and how they complain about lockdown prowlers shelling.

    The heavily outdoor nature of many base designs kinda make artillery a rough idea since there's currently no designs with a way to effectively retaliate against long range bombardment of things like spawn rooms or vehicle spawns at many/most bases. Actual artillery that could indirect fire would just exacerbate this issue and either require base redesigns to allow defenders more ways out to avoid the fire in some way or such a long delay between shots that the usefulness of the artillery is limited at best.
  16. Diilicious

    I wouldnt mind artillery so much if the shells worked like ground control 2.

    as in they are REALLY obvious, shiny, fly very high into the sky before falling down.
  17. Haquim


    By the official definition of artillery:
    Artillery is a class of large military weapons built to fire munitions far beyond the range of infantry's small arms.
    If it dies in battle to any infantry that is not a commando operation or a steamroll it is either too close or simply nothing thats worth being called artillery.
    But yes, indirect fire is not required by definition, but I suppose since we can shoot quite a bit farther nowadays than back when we used cannons it is almost implicit that artillery is capable of indirect fire.
    Which doesn't mean it can't fire on sight if need be.

    And yes, Infantry dislike everything that kills them, even other infantery. Boohoo.
    If those guys would finally stop playing infantry and start playing Planetside we could have a lot less whining and a lot more epic battles.

    .... Also vehicles with a low HP pool and low speed kinda defeats the purpose of spending the nanites and going through the trouble of bringing it to the fight. Since, unlike infantry, vehicles are neither free nor do they magically pop up in a fight, except if the fight is around a vehicle spawn of course.
    • Up x 1
  18. Demigan


    You can do this by either making all shells count as mines, which are server controlled and can hit beyond render range. Hit detection would be a bit wonky so maybe the shell needs to have it's speed reduced or calculated it's impact site beforehand so the shell can be rendered properly for players, and they won't experience a death before the shell hits on their screen.

    Alternatively push artillery in a support role: deploy the artillery and leave it. Now players who have a target-painter can link up to the artillery and fire it. The shell is then 'owned' by the one with the target-painter so you use his render range instead of the artillery. The owner of the artillery gets support XP for all XP earned by players who use their artillery.
    Balancing factors could be a visible laser, you need to aim it on the target for X seconds (so aiming at infantry is tough, aim at the ground instead). The laser lights you up like a christmas tree as well with a unique sound, radar visibility as if spotted and the visible laser itself pointing at your direction. So while the artillery is non-LOS, you can prevent it from firing by killing the player wielding the laser, who does need LOS.
    Add the long shell travel time before it arrives and you need to lead it immensely, making it mostly useful against Zergs, anti-spawncamping (place one in the next base and see how all spawncampers start lasering stuff) and to break stand-offs.
    Probably best anyway to add long reload times and some way to prevent every player on the field using your artillery. For instance by allowing you to designate a base, anyone in the area of that base can use the artillery. Add the option to restrict it further down to platoon-members or lock it completely for personal use and it's already pretty good.

    Edit: Ciphernine, why do you assume that these shells have a huge AOE? If you give them current HE size explosions at maximum while shooting at an enemy they can't see they will rarely hit unless it's a real and present threat. You won't be able to spawncamp, just try it with an HE Prowler, Vanguard or Magrider: Stand at 250 to 300m distance of the spawnroom, aim at the door, close your eyes and fire at random until you run out of ammo. You will barely hit anyone, let alone kill them.
    Why won't you hit anyone? People don't usually hang around the spawnroom. They are either behind the shields or running away to the next cover. The perfect time where you get a kill is so small that if you fire randomly without timing your shot, you will rarely ever get a kill.
  19. Ronin Oni

    "All the team leads who priorly objected are gone"

    ^I already said that.

    Just because they left doesn't mean they'll 180 on the decision though.

    Also, there's still the issue of hit detection against unrendered targets.

    Are there possible "fixes"? Of course there are... but will the team see that as worth their time to add artillery which could have a negative impact on infantry play?
  20. Scr1nRusher



    The games not about just infantry play.
    • Up x 3