Instead of having orbital strikes used on enemy position simply just have it used in cases where Platoon defensive lines have been over run. Orbital Strikes have a 20 min charge before use and can only begin to charge once a platoon sundy has been deployed. For example your platoon has been holding a position for 30min. Another enemy platoon arrives and begins to over run your position. You activate orbital strike and steel rain of death comes down on your position killing foe and friend.
Give orbital strike to game masters who seek out sstale mates that havr passed the limit of fun. Kill evry fkin one and their vehicle in the area.
We need Orbital Strikes badly. Sick of fighting at bases with even pop, yet the attackers can just camp outside with vehicles and shell everyone inside the base. They need to eat a death beam from space! In Planetside 1 a good OS was a great stalemate breaker and discouraged camping vehicles.
Fix HE first. Btw I think its ironic you all want it as a platoon tool. A good PL doesn't need a OS to deal with a vehicle zerg, he has his Squads pull and deploy to Gals and fly over the zerg and back cap them from behind.. then proceed to blow them up with turrets. Doesn't seem like OS is needed. With that said, I'm not opposed to Orbital Strikes. But frequently the players, like many in this thread, aren't being honest. They make up excuses like vehicle zergs need to be broken up. Hoping to play on the emotions of the general 'hardened' community's stance against zergs (despite the urge each community member has to play in a zerg). Why do some people like OS's? Well lets be honest with ourselves. Is a method of making a large showing to a good number of players. You get to saturate an area with superior firepower. Its big, its sexy, and alot of sh-t is going to blow the f- up. Why wouldn't anyone want that? Well the ones being on the receiving end of course. What you all need to do is stop trying to entice people to come over to your side with false notions of 'well it will be balanced' 'it can only be used sparingly on a cooldown' 'you have to be in a platoon to use it.' Come on now. Knock it off. Just say you want it because its freaking cool. Seriously. That's a way better reason than the excuses you all are making up to hide the fact. And you shouldn't be ashamed or afraid to say it. It -is- cool. Once that's out of the way. What exactly should a OS do? You all seriously think DB will add in an ability that will instantly destroy everything in a 100m spread instantly? Forget the prerequisites, I don't care if it costs 1000 DBC, they're not going to do that. They're not going to give us a tool that will potential fire off their anti-cheat detection, even as bad as it might be. No... be realistic. What will likely happen is a 50m diameter of randomly placed HEAT rounds. One per second for about 10 seconds. Rounds would deal 1600 damage, 750 indirect up to 1m, 1 after 5m. Just like a Titan HEAT round from a Vanguard (its default gun). Ten of those, hit randomly, one per second over 10 seconds, over a 50m circle around the chosen point of impact. You're not going to obliterate a tank column with this. Now.. those being struck will want to move, I mean a Titan HEAT is a Titan HEAT and it still hurts. Infantry will likely disperse as well, as a random good hit will kill them. So you still get the effect you are looking for. In addition the strike isn't instantaneous. Those rounds, pulses, or whatever (faction flavor). Need time to hit the ground. Say about 5-10 seconds. A dusty particle effect likewise affects the area before strike. Allowing infantry to get the hell out of dodge.. vehicle drivers may not notice if sitting in thermals or zoom bombarding until the first round hits. And of course the effect of the strikes will be spectacular. It won't be the normal visual of a HEAT round, but some red, blue, or purple madness and mayhem. Shock and Awe is the term for this. Those in the blast can't see anything while in it. Those outside it will stare and watch. That sort of thing. But now.. how much does it cost? Here's where you balance it. It costs about 4000 to 5000 nanites to use. Wait a minute.. the limit's 750. How you going to pay for it? Well you all conveniently said its a squad/platoon tool right? Lets start there. Add another cert line to Leadership that allows Nanite pooling. Allow members of a squad to donate nanites to the pool to where the SLs and PLs can use the nanites for Platoon and Squad devices and effects. So what is the cooldown on this OS? Well that's easy. At 4000-5000 nanites, whatever it takes for multiple people to earn and donate up to that amount. Wait.. can't they just spam it with a full platoon? Sure can, with 48 players with full nanites... They could drop 7 of these muthas. But then 48 players will be at 0 or near 0 nanites. Which means 48 players can't throw grenades, revives, pull MAXes, pull vehicles, drop mines, or use health kits. If they want to blow their load, let them. Needless to say, you might see 2-3 of these come out at once.. once in a while. But not too often. 5000 nanites is quite a bit for the eqivelent of 10 tank rounds, be cheaper to get 10 MBTs and use that... right? Well sure. But why not do both? Or throw down the OS and not have to be in a Tank. I mean theirs flexibility here, but that flexibility comes with a cost. 'But 10 HEAT rounds isn't going to kill anything' That's realism setting in, friend. We're not going to get something that wipes out a gridsquare. Just not going to happen.
