They would be a really nice addon to the tactical and strategic gameplay , aswell as adding something for the ''not so good'' squads that are always pushed around by everyone, beacause they aren't really useful in actual combat? Am I asking for too much or this possible?
There have been suggestions to add the vehicle from PS1 that had artillery bombardment. Personally I don't see a reason not to considering how limited the applications would be. But people are worried about new vehicle, omg vehicle farm no plz, unfun blah blah, so odds are someone will say it's OP in this thread at some point without any basis to the claim.
As I only play infantry, the idea of more things that can blow me up without me being able to return fire is not attractive. Being under mass tank spam is indistinguishable from artillery now. But bombers? Maybe more targets for my G2A?
There are many ways to prevent spam. For example we start with the way the Glaive works. It's not operated by players directly, it requires the player to be within range of the enemy and fire a spotting dart or a large and visible laserbeam. Then you can put an AOE warning signalling to players that an arty strike is incomming. Additionally all shells can be marked similar to engagement radar so that players know they are incoming and where they are. You can even allow players to shoot arty shells and destroy them/reduce their effectiveness/push them off-course like a phoenix. The shells themselves can also have large light and smoke effects and even a whistling sound to signal their approach, not to mention a slow projectile velocity so players have plenty of time to run away or take action. Frankly if you added only a portion of all of these idea's simultaneously it would already be UP.
Artillery is the "king of battle", probably the most important thing in fighting a war. Since pre-Napoleonic times, a general would be an absolute idiot not to have heavy guns under his control. The basic concept of modern warfare is to find, fix, and then destroy the enemy with indirect fires. Infantry find enemies, tanks keep them in place, and then air and artillery bomb them to little pieces. We do have air support in PS2, but artillery has several advantages, namely that it cannot be so easily intercepted and that it's much less expensive. Simply put, it would be an affront to the term "combined arms" if PS2 was a "combined arms" game without the "king of battle". We should have little mortars that Engineers can carry around for squad-level artillery support: We should have field guns that can deliver heavier, sustained fire for hitting targets at the platoon-level: And we should have long-range equivalents of cruise missiles that can be delivered hexes away and require aggressive combat recon to counter: As in war, most casualties should come from being blown to little bits from very far away, not from shooting a person in the face with a rifle. Only then will PS2 realise the greatness of a "combined arms" game.
Well, I gues mortars would be a bit like snipers - reachable for retaliation. If that was the case my main objection (lack of retaliation ability) is removed. Ofc present-day mortars are crew served weapons which stop the users from doing anything else and which are not carried around by too many individuals. If deployable in the game I guess we would need somerthing to stop a massive number of engies setting up deployed auto mortars to bring sustained continuous fire on fixed defensive positions - maybe an ammo limit and the need for an ammo sundy to resupply?
We call people that kill dufuses sitting on turrets in the open "snipers". Why would motars need to be auto? And why does making the option exist mean it's going to be spammed to infinity? I mean we already have motars! They're called glaives! Now I can never build a base ever because 30 glavies will lock on to me from 1000 meters and kill my base before I even have a chance....right... OH WAIT! There's the archer that can go through shield walls and hurt maxes a bunch and kill turrets! That almost no one equips. Ok well how about lockon AA rockets! That almost no one uses. Or maybe AV turrets! That no one ever spams with several engies. It's literally all ******* scares. Pretty sure this is close enough.
If integrate correctly, sure it could add something to the game. The biggest problem is that needs to be just effective enough to be rewarding, just weak enough to not be consider a nuisance, just obvious enough to be able to get rid of them and the list goes on and on with on how it would need to be implemented, to not be considered bad or good. Also artillery is unlikely going to be implemented since we rather rarely at this point move far away from bases, and have open battles, where it would be an actual good thing to have since it could be part of forcing people away from their spot. Also artillery spam on an already locked down base, is really not what this game needs right now
Not everything should be able to retaliate against everything. A shotgun-wielding Medic has little defences against a high-altitude Liberator... that's just war. There's your problem right there. Since the introduction of effective field artillery, sitting in a fixed defensive position has been a dead man's tactic. If the enemy has managed to fix you, that's not a good thing. Instead adopt a modern mobile defensive tactic, with multiple lines of defence and peppered with counteroffensives. That's the way that war ought to be fought, not some medieval idea of hiding in a castle. Wargame is a pretty good approximation of what PS2 ideally ought to be, and its implementation of artillery (and naval combat) should be an inspiration for PS2 balancing. For those that haven't played, artillery is principally limited by a few things: 1) Spotting and intelligence are important in Wargame, where static defences are dead defences. Artillery can only shoot at what has been seen or a known position where the enemy has been. The best defence to artillery is to hide your position, or if you have been revealed, shift your position frequently. It is quite difficult for artillery to hit moving units, but if you insist on fighting it out with infantry in a village, you pretty much deserve to be blown to bits. 2) Artillery that fires can be traced back to its firing position. This allows for countering artillery by using your own aircraft, artillery (counterbattery), or fast-moving vehicles. Is it stupid to try to use slow-moving infantry to counter long-ranged artillery? Sure. But there are so many other options that artillery is fairly balanced. 3) Artillery takes up a lot of "supply points", because in Wargame you actually have logistics and units need constant resupply. If you go heavy with the artillery, you might find yourself lacking in tank shells. Infantry still has a perfectly valid role in Wargame... it's not as if artillery makes slow and squishy infantry obsolete. Infantry just have to play smarter, relying on stealth and tactics to avoid artillery strikes. It was a pretty slap-it-together job, but it conceivably could work.
Three quick things: I like the model used in Wargame and would be happy to see that approach, thanks for sharing (didn't know about it). I did make several assumptions about how mortars, for example, might work and some of those could be wrong - I've not noticed a detailed suggestion about the mechanics. I was thinking about how people sometimes exploit developments in ways that are perhaps not always foreseen or intended. Regarding point 1 I particularly like how defenders would need to respond to artillery bombardment but d'you think it is a bit too much teamwork to expect from the playerbase, as opposed to say, just major crying about "artillery OP plz nerf"? Not that I don't enjoy reading the whine threads on the forum......................
Defenders simply have to pull vehicles/use drop points for heavies. I mean we have launchers that go 450 meters, airdropping a group of heavies 300 meters of an artillery encampment should be easy if people want to stick to infantry. People who pull vehicles can be notified of where this threat is coming from and kill it. Also, just to be clear, no one thinks the glaive is a threat because you can shoot the targeting dart from inside your base. It is a garbage weapon that devs wanted utility over practicality in this case, which kills the point of having artillery in the first place. Say I could snipe you with a flaregun because it was a homing projectile but all it did was hit you for 1 damage. Would it be practical? No. Probably funny as hell? Yes. Not to mention I'd be within sniping distance. Lastly, bombardment is still limited, how many bases do you know of with literally no cover from the air? If you said one at any point then you'd be lying or it would be a player made base with just a hive. Same way there are ways to avoid airstrikes, there's a way to avoid artillery.
Playerbase would defo cry. The problem is the game is just too big for some people. Most FPS gamers are used to small maps, everything that can hurt them they can see (and retaliate to). Plantside is different to all that. In Planetside you have to consider the entire map as your battleground. You have to look at the positions of the enemy armour columns, where the infantry are concentrating, which lanes are exposed to flaking attacks, how easily your tech can get cut off from the front, where the enemy HIVEs are and how many, etc etc. Most players (no offense intended to anyone) cant see past the tip of their nose, or dont want to. They live happily in their 100m x 100m zone and ignore the potential for threats outside of that. If i were at a base and i saw artillery shelling the base, id check the map for possible positions, follow the shell tracers, and respond with some airpower up their ****. That arty piece is a part of the battle i am having at the base, its not a seperate entitly 'farming' its actively getting involved and therefore deserves my attention. Thats why i play all parts of this game, because at any moment you may need to respond to a threat 'outside of your zone' and that may require more than just twitch shooting skills, which again causes some discomfort to the vast majority of FPS gamers.
Hey guys I thought of a possible situation: If the artillery vehicle was like the 2s7, open top that would make it vulnerable enough and easy enough to hunt, which is 1 balancing factor. Also to avoid extreme spam maybe it can use Cortium as ammo, that way you'd need the actual crew and someone to gather Cortium. If the rate of fire was relatively low as well, then several vehicles would be needed to be needed to maintain good suppression and with that several ANTs to keep them supplied. Also the shell travel time can be relatively long, making it more suitable to break stalemates or slow advances rather than just farm. This means real artillery spam is only feasible on an outfit level, which can spam tanks or planes on a base as well, and can be countered easily since the vehicles are not survivable. In addition it won't be as easy for everyone to grab an artillery piece since you need an ANT to keep you supplied, unlike something like a tank or a plane. What do you think guys?
