This may not be entirely coherent as its very late here and I'm tired, but I wanted to share this before I forgot. Its very possible someone has had this idea before me, but what if SOE added a mobile, player operated artillery piece that could fire over great ranges with the help of a spotter (would fit with an infiltrator's play style quite well). I think it would be a lot more interesting than having "npc" barrages coming from somewhere off the map, both because I believe it would be fun for the artillery team and because the artillery pieces could be destroyed by enemies (as opposed to orbital strikes/off-map artillery and the like). I haven't quite worked out how the spotter and gunner would work in tandem, but perhaps something like: 1. Spotter points at position on the ground and "reads the coordinates" back to the gunner. Add some sort of equippable tool to accomplish this. 2. Artillery operator is given some sort of overlay showing where he needs to aim to hit that location. I think it would be fun to have multiple battle lines in combat as it would open up more options for tactical maneuvers (flanking, etc). It might also provide an opportunity to add more support functions for engineers hanging out at the "rear camps." Balance issues aside, does anyone else think this would be fun? I've hardly thought about this at all, so please share your thoughts!
What would happen is that players would have common targets zeroed in and not need spotters. You saw this sort of thing in the early Battlefield games. Back when I played CoD, I could fire a grenade at the start of a round so that it would hit where players were likely to be when it got there; this was fun for me, but probably not for the people who just got blown up out of nowhere right after they spawned. Getting shelled isn't fun. I don't think it would be good for the game.
it was in ps1,it should never be in ps2,people need their classe's,go out and kill stuff,so i disagree.
Yeah, I know. My basic idea was that it might be fun if "both ends" of the strike were player controlled. Or, as I've seen posted somewhere else, it could also be interesting if you needed to control certain bases to use the strikes.
If it's anything like the mobile artillery in battlefield 3 then... There, that's my constructive input on the subject
Lol. Well as far as I know orbital strikes have been confirmed by Higby to be coming. Don't you think it would at least make it a bit more interesting if the origin of the strikes could be contested/destroyed? Gives you some way to counter it at least.
Yeah it was in PS1. According to Higby, he claims it will not be like the original 'Ion cannon' it's apparently supposed to be more of an artillery strike for displacement instead of a beam of death. Please note the word apparently, as I have no further information than that. Could be a possibility you may need spotters for the new OS, as very limited information was been released. But it is supposed to be more of an arty strike. Only way you could make it more player based is by adding artillery into the game.
Highly mentioned something along the lines of some large piece of artillery as part of the command cert tree in an interview he did with someone. I do like the idea of infiltrators having some kind of range finder gear to get co-ordinates on an area to attack.
Battlefield 1942 arty system would be welcome. Requires practise, can't really be spammed and isn't 100 percent accurate.
Suggestion I had in beta was to add new special generators on each hex/zone that basically has an invisible scrambler field blanket the area. The lore reason is this emitter generator is scrambling any form of orbital targeting in the area so your own faction cant get a clear shot. In game terms, this means that the emitters have to be destroyed before you can start calling in orbital strikes. These special generators could be infiltrator specific or allow everyone to break them like regular generators. Regardless, depending on how important the zone, more emitters may exist and all of them would have to be destroyed. Once they're all down, you have to be certed for it and be of a descent battlerank first. You would then be able to mark a visible location, as in, actually have to laser mark it physically for a few moments. At which point, the area is then painted (warning every enemy that they're about to get the **** kicked out of them in about 5-10 seconds.) With a big ion light charging up! If you don't move, you're very likely to get vaporized as the next 10-30 seconds is a barrage of beams/missiles/death raining from the sky randomly all over the area. Once the orbital strike is called, its now on cooldown for that hex for about 10-30 minutes. Lastly, to prevent ridiculous kill/farm. The orbital strike would confer a 'fired' exp reward with a blanket exp reward for success given to everyone in the hex that used it. (the fired exp and blanket hex exp are the same and not separate stacked.) the blanket exp would scale on how effective it was. 1 kill would be like 5 exp given to everyone. 12 or so deaths with 5 or so tanks and so on could be like 200 exp to everyone. Basically small but a nice success exp. Kills with an orbital strike do not pad K/D scores. Lastly, while the blasts from each 'beam' falling from the sky would be huge, it shouldn't go through buildings unless a beam exploded near a window. People should be able to still hide under decent cover otherwise this beam would -really- get out of hand.
