[Suggestion] Artillery!

That's pretty much what the AV MANA turret was supposed to be... there's a reason it's called a "howitzer" and looks suspiciously like a Bulldog!

Artillery wouldn't be fun for the person firing it. It would be him just clicking an area repeatedly and hoping. Artillery wouldn't be fun for the person getting hit by it. He would be randomly struck with a rocket, without having been able to do anything about it, which would be kind of enraging. Artillery should not be in the game.

Would actually be fun imo... but to each their own. Having an artillery barrage come down on your position would be a brutal affair. Make it loud and intimidating. Make people seek shelter, make vehicles scurry in an attempt to avoid the bombardment as the air power desperately moves to destroy the arty, but runs into a group of skyguards protecting it. I think it would be f****** sweet. A battle without artillery would be nothing more than a vulgar brawl... Which is what planetside has been since launch... Add some dignity to the fight.

But tbh I'm biased towards this because I am an artilleryman...


ALSO... think of the possibilities. People complain about prowlers camping a single spot. Blow them to Hell. Its that simple with artillery, REAL artillery the indirect fire kind.

As has been pointed out before, artillery can be done in many ways.

First render range options:

• Render range artillery
  • AI artillery works up to 300m, and AV artillery works up to 800 to 1000 m. You can only hit rendered units.
• Non-render range artillery
  • Shells can be server-controlled like spitfires or mines. This allows you to hit enemies that aren't rendered to you. Since you can't see how close your shell hits you will not feel cheated when an edge-case determines you missed.
  • Support-based artillery. Rather than someone occupying the artillery, artillery is simply deployed and used as a support tool. Players can use a laser designator on rendered targets to have the artillery automatically aim and fire on the target.

Then you have the type of artillery

• "Point and click"
  • The player points to a region of the sky and prays his shells hit
    • This opts for high teamwork, where a player on the ground communicates where the shell hit and offers direction to get on target.
  • The player can "map-click" (see WoT for instance) and will fire a shell at a target
    • The easiest way to aim and fire artillery, but would need the most restrictions to prevent it being too easy to get kills on unsuspecting victims.
  • The player will see where his shots landed automatically, and can re-adjust from his elevation to fire better on target
    • After dialing in this weapon would need again some restrictions to prevent easy killing.
  • Players see on the map where their shell will land with their current aim
    • Similar to map-clicking but a bit more difficult, would need a lot of restrictions regardless.
  • The player can follow the shell's flight and see where it lands, then adjust.
• Support artillery
  • Artillery that can only be called in as a support, rather than being controlled by a player.
    • Laser designator
    • Ability operated by the owner/squad leaders

Then you have ways to balance them

• Type of artillery platform
  • The type of artillery platform as described above will determine a lot of the power and useability of the artillery. Rule of thumb is that the easier&safer to hit a target with artillery, the heavier the restrictions on usage, damage output, AOE, and capabilities need to be restricted.
• AOE&damage
  • Many people automatically assume that the AOE is a massive affair, and that damage is off the charts. You can easily adjust the AOE to be as big as an AP shell, or as large as an HE shell or grenade. Also try this: Stand at around 200 to 300m distance of an enemy spawnbunker with an HE tank, close your eyes and fire randomly. Just count the amount of hits and kills you score when you dump your entire ammo reserve into it. After you've realized you don't get a lot of kills or even hits this way, you should realize that firing without knowing for certain what your enemy is doing will not be granting artillery users automatic kills
• Shell travel time&tell-tale signs
  • Many players assume that using an artillery will mean player constantly get killed out of no-where without a chance to react. By introducing a slow muzzle velocity and various signs such as big lights and a tell-tale sound when artillery shells are incoming you can react and get out of the way of the shells in time.
• Shell traveling arc
  • The higher a shell arcs before going down, the more vertical it will come down on the target and the least problems it experiences from surrounding terrain and buildings. You can create more flat trajectories to make shooting into enclosed spaces and bases harder, and this limits the amount of placement options for artillery if you want to have a clear shot at a particular area.
• A random COF
  • Best used for the easy to use artillery, a random COF will mean that you can't hit the exact same spot over and over with a shell. Since you'll likely only be able to fire on places where friendly players are walking around, a random COF would increase the chances of friendly fire, causing you to get weapon-locked and hampering your team rather than helping them
• Visibility
  • You can only properly fire at something you can properly see. You can have various systems to determine how visible enemies are. I'll only list techniques based on spotting here:
    • Spotted enemies show up on the map normally, your radar-range for spotted enemies is increased to accomodate.
    • Spotted enemies create a "density bubble". So as artillery firing at long-range targets you only see an approximation of where enemies were spotted, and how many enemies are spotted on average. At the same time you can see friendly density bubbles to avoid shooting your friendlies. This system means you can't perfectly aim at a target but must hazard a guess where they are hiding.
• Needs men/woman on the ground
  • Ties in with visibility, but requiring artillery to function based on players near the targets is a good way to balance it out. If players constantly have to spot things (like, say, an infiltrator, yey for spotters!) for the artillery you can control much better who gets fired upon and who isn't.
  • For support-based artillery, the player needs to be right there up close and personal to fire the artillery. The enemy can see the laser designator beam, you can add a radar blip for the one using the laser designator and an "aiming time" on target before the artillery actually fires his shell. This means that even though artillery is a non-LOS weapon, the enemy can stop the artillery from firing by killing the laser designator or messing with his aim.
• Visibility and back-trackability of the artillery
  • The farther an artillery is auto-spotted the easier it is to spot and destroy, especially for those Wraith Flashes.
  • The easier it is to see a shell, and the longer a shell's arc is visible with a smoke-trail for instance, the easier it is to find the point of origin of the artillery shell and destroy it.
• Artillery cost
  • You can buy a 750 resource mastodon of destruction, but if any ESF or Wraith Flash decides to come looking after the first shot you fire it will be a short-lived adventure. The higher the cost, the more power you can expect in return.
• Reload time
  • So you can fire a devastating shell into the middle of a base from long range? Doesn't matter much if your reload speed is 5 minutes afterwards! Of course, depending on the shell strength and easy-of-use you can adapt the reload speed to make the weapon less powerful.
• Ammo capacity
  • A low ammo capacity means they can't be used constantly. It also narrows their placement a lot if you want constant use, such as placing them near ammo towers, which allows enemies to find and destroy you even faster.

And last but absolutely my favorite, the type of artillery you can have:

• Self-propelled artillery
  • Artillery that drives itself to a location, deploys and starts firing.
• Dragged artillery
  • Artillery that needs to be dragged somewhere, deployed and used. Small artillery could even have perks such as not needing to deploy to fire.
• Big&small artillery
  • Big artillery is there for the staple "big guns and big damage" capabilities.
  • Small artillery can be more flexible and could be better for support related acts. Firing a weak volley of several shells can be powerful, especially if these are specialized shells for use on the battlefield such as (variations of) EMP, flash, smoke or Concussion grenades.
• Howitzers
  • You deploy them and can use them as artillery or you can use them as a turret and fire directly at enemies.
• Single-shot
  • Fires one shot for good damage
• Multi-shot
  • My preference, fires a volley of shots at a target, then goes in for a long reload. This allows you to pepper an area for some nice visual and powerful acts on the battlefield.
  • With various shell patterns available you can fire specialized volleys on enemies, from simple circular patters with random hits in them to "walking" patterns where shells fall in a line.
• Variable ammo
  • As mentioned with the small artillery, each artillery could have unique ammo types. This can be copies of existing infantry grenades, but you can also have rocket-based artillery for special shell-trajectories, guided shells that allow the player to (slightly) adjust the trajectory and better hit a target, self-detonated shells such as clusterbombs to shower an area with smaller explosions, or even just friendly support ammo such as firing an ammo-pack to some infantry, shooting healing/revive-grenades on a certain position or firing shells that spot hostiles in the area.

Between chingles artwork and your reasoning, it is shocking that artillery has not been taken seriously.

It would be AMAZING to break zergs when outpopped.

It would also be amazing to beef up a zerg with some blitzkrieg play.

Anything can be used to cheese so cheesing with it is a non factor. We can;t carry on denying good stuff at the behest of the ones who cheese for k/d with everything or want to farm (I like farming myself).

Because Higgles said so.