Forum rumors and dev presentations hint at future changes removing orbital strike's no-fire zone. Instead, this suggestion proposes to incrementally expand the OS range, at first only to the sunderer no-deploy zone surrounding bases. The reason is two-fold: OS is the most powerful weapon in the game and friendly causalities are inevitable when allowing it to be shot inside bases. It doesn't matter if team mates are outside the area obliterated by the blast as the accompanying shockwave can lift even MBTs far up and away. Secondly, in lattice-base defensive scenarios, a good target for OS is at the enemy sunderer location. By targeting that it becomes possible to not only kill lots of infantry, but also perhaps the spawnpoint, thus stopping the enemies in their tracks and saving the day. Imagine a 96 vs 96 fight here The weakness of the suggestion is that OS does not gain any new utility for lattice-base offensive purposes, and well, that the owner gets less kills in situations where enemies have entrenched themselves firmly in a base.
I absolutely dislike OS in their entirety, they're bad enough as is. Completely destroying anything and everything instantly isn't a good thing to allow players to do in a mutliplayer game. Fun for exactly one person and awful for potentially 100+ others. I've certainly been TK'd with an orbital strike. Now they want to make them target the spawn point were all the attackers are? No one wins when everyone dies.
You know nothing about OS. They are not instantly. You get a long warning ahead(definitely long enough for vehicles to stay unharmed even if they have been right in the center). On screen by colors and in chat. You need to set the oribal up. Defend it for like 10 minutes(so the overall process with building a defense etc. is like 20 minutes just for a rather small target area. If you want to have the max radius then it takes like 45 minutes). Then you need to get the marker, drive close to the target(the marker is very limited. Like 20m or something like that), zoom in(which needs time) and stay alive for another second or two after shooting. If you get killed you need to get a new marker. So to make use of it you essentially need a stealth infil, a wraith flash(or some expensive flight vehicle) and some luck(that nobody catches you ahead and that the enemy stays in place) since you need to get really close to an area with a lot of enemies. Having a spawn tube and vehicle terminal at the constructed base helps in case you fail. With all those limitations including minimum range, maximum range, and no-deploy zones(that do not only limit the target area but as well where I can build the orbitals) including those of other Hives/orbitals...the current use is that limited that I think I have been killed by exactly one orbital since they have been introduced(which wasn't exactly yesterday). I built an orbital countless times...usually striking single tanks or nothing at all cause there are no targets and then the continent gets locked. So far I can say that I had only like 3 bases where my orbital destroyed a large amount of enemies or an enemy constructed base(in later case you can either destroy the enemy base much faster with a single MBT or infiltrator....or the enemy force is strong enough to kill your orbital ahead of time. So orbital is more of a gimmick there.). And I usually had to spend more than an hour(closer to 2hours) with my base for that. The current impact of orbitals does not matter at all. I ain't sure if striking spawn points will change much there...but I don't think that 15 seconds respawn all 20 minutes or something like that are a huge let down for gameplay. So far I never had any complaints by anyone after a successful orbital...not even by faction mates that got killed in the event. For most of them it's rather fun to see something like that happen once in a while...cause it's so rare. The only impact that I think it will have is that players won't just entirely ignore bases with orbital anymore.
I think It will be rly unfun for others yeah. You'll have squads spamming so many structures, enemy will have no chance destroying the OS base even with the walls having no shields.. Solo base builders will not be able to do anything. Structures will have to get nerfed even harder because of base building squads. Like I rly want the current construction to get recreated a bit, I don't see anything good in it right now.
You really think that entire squads will make their xp(only one can do the orbital after all) etc. go down just to build bases? That may happen a few times for fun but that's it(that's like lancer squads, G2A squads, squads where all fly around with galaxies etc.). Even if that should become a thing: You would then have rip down squads as well cause that actually yields quite some xp.
I don't know if orbital strike is the best or the worst thing I've spent certs on. It costs 3000 (?) certs and requires investment into base building both cert-wise and time-wise. Its also difficult to use as Pacster3 mentioned requiring certain alignment of enemies out in the open. At the same it is rather flexible when fully charged up and if built before primetime there is likely to be many targets later on. Still, sitting cloaked outside a base being captured, waiting 5-10 minutes for the enemy zerg to continue on, can be a drag. Especially if there is no stallmate at "the spot" and you end up completely missing the armor column passing by. I believe a buff to the OS range/reach gives a counter to zergs which this game truly needs.
does like noone actually read or watch stuff? OS being able to fire into bases is literally the first sentence of that announcment . the next sentence is "and it will only reduce infantry to 1 HP if they are inside a building instead of dealing actual damage"
