Mobile Artillery would be lightly armored and lack any substantial close range weaponry, instead relying on surrounding allies for anti-flank support. The artillery UI would have a numbered vertical and horizontal ladder showing degrees and a range finder when scanning across the ground. For striking targets behind cover, or well out of sight, the Artillery would need a spotter to give corrections. To fire, the artillery would need to deploy, and would only be able to fire when aiming above 30 degrees, with a slowly rotating turret. Your camera would move freely but an aiming reticule would follow you gradually. Any mobile force would be difficult to deal with, but stationary targets like spawn camping tanks, infantry hiding behind rocks, and player made bases without guard patrols, and fights within choke points, would all be prime targets. Artillery would be best countered by air of any type, or with harassers that can easily avoid shells and flank them, though anything that can get close to them can force them to pack up and run. On their own, the artillery would not be able to 1-shot anything, and would instead be intended to synchronize with groups for maximum effect. A well synchronized barrage onto a single point could wipe out several tanks at once, but the fire rate would be too slow to out-do repairs and healing between shots if you act alone.
Give me an idea what you mean by "behind cover." There's a broad spectrum of situations in this game that I could call "behind cover."
Spawn Camping tanks. In order to fire on those tanks, you need to first have them not survive the barrage, and for them to not have artillery. If they survived, they would destroy the artillery. I would hope these weaponry, would need spotters to actually fire, or something. Or a hand-full could just sit in the middle of no-where shelling an entire base. Destroying any defenses, forces or similar. If the enemy has any or more aircraft, then only they can have artillery, which given your idea, counters out Tanks, clustered infantry & vehicles, leaving only Harassers left to challenge them without near suicide. I have no problem with artillery, but there is an issue with a long-range bombardment that needs no help, to blast apart entire bases. With the only solution being harassers to find it, or aircraft.
Anything under a roof or shield would be safe from direct hits, and the splash damage, even if somewhat large, would be insufficient to score any kills on 100% health targets without large scale barrage. The artillery would need to set up in locations that are just plain difficult to reach, fire off their salvos, and relocate as soon as possible before they're flushed out. They would have a similar play style to snipers, but with a much larger exaggeration on bullet drop and having tracable shots. Anyone with eyes on the skies, and listening carefully, will be able to see and hear where the artillery is firing from, and avoid being struck. There could be a sound that accompanies the falling munitions, maybe faction specific to avoid confusion as to who's shooting. If a base is getting spawn camped, and you want to free it up, shelling the entire base for a minute could clear the way for a counterattack. Artillery would be less useful for farming a base, because you'd just be hitting all the friendly targets who insist on getting as close as possible to their spawn.
Considering the range, and the indirect nature of the shells raining down, there is no way for anyone leaving the spawn room, or any shielded, covered area or similar, to not take a 50% chance of being severely crippled by the shells. As well, how severe is one artillery vehicle? If it's enough to cripple any opponent outside of a roof far from open zones, to the point where a single low-damage shot can off them, it's pretty much the same as if the artillery did it. Cliff-sides, rocks, and other cover is incredibly plentiful near bases. Since it's indirect artillery fire, it does not provide line-of-sight nor has a need for it; Snipers need direct line of sight, and fire in straight lines. Artillery is curved firing arcs, which can bypass cover via their curved projected arc of travel. Which means they are perfectly safe from any return fire, beyond opposing artillery units due to not needing nor exposing themselves to direct line of sight in any form, to their target(s). A sniper, leaves a tracer which is a direct line to them; You have the general area, and can see the firing position. Any sniper-fire can then be stopped by cover that blocks this line of sight to the relative position. This can be done ahead time as well, by minimizing the sight lines from positions not held by allies, or simply reducing your exposure time outside of relatively secured cover. Given artillery fire is not only arcing fire, raining down from above, it is also indirect fire capable of being used from behind multiple objects. You do not need to have Line-of-sight (LOS), on your target, which means you can not be traced back as easily. As well, since it is not a straight-line, it instead is an vertical-approaching arc, denying the weaponry is incredibly hard. Due to this, you also can not minimize exposure, without having the rare overhead cover - And of course, this in of itself, prevents locating or seeing the trails of the vertical arcs of the weapons fire. Which given it is bombardment, at a steep angle when it impacts, this opens a radial zone of possible artillery positions at the point of firing - Which can move. If it is too slow in velocity, it ironically will have an outdated arc for projecting the artillery position. Too fast, and it will not grant enough time, unless unit is starting at the vertical arc as it is fired. Due to range, interception will be a matter of response time, to have any result. Snipers, are a Cone of fire, with a smaller range, no AOA, and need line-of-sight, reducing the search to a visual scan most of the time, using the tracers from the weapon itself if nothing else. Snipers also are precision weapons, with no AOA, that can not damage vehicles (unless archer). They also must have LOS, which means return fire can sent back along this fire-lane of theirs. Indirect fire, however can only be returned with indirect fire (which is rare), unless source has LOS with target(s) directly. Which given you have a firing arc, you would logically ensure to have no LOS to target, to use as much of your cover advantage as possible. So no, it isn't like a Sniper at all. Spawn Camping a base, with AOA weaponry is done at a distance. Attackers stay behind cover that grants LOS on defenders leaving the spawn room. Each spawn room has enough room & distance between the cover used to camp it by infantry, and the spawn room doors for a proper sized artillery blast. Any idiot standing close enough to be hit by AOA, would've died to the people in the spawn room. Oh yes, managing to shell the entire base as an option, to free the defenders... The enemy camping is more likely to have the vehicles, aircraft, infantry, and artillery to stop anything less than a full force engaging. If artillery alone could shell the entire base in actuality without it being impractical, it would be used more often to remove the defenders from all exterior positions, to enable a faster spawn camp. Any time the defense manages to keep a hold outside of an interior room far from any exterior terrain (where shells would detonate), artillery fire would clean them out. I like Artillery. However execution of it, is very hard, without it becoming the best way to farm infantry & vehicles outside of aircraft.
All this version will do is give players incentives to sit somewhere, aim "just here", and then spam the fire button until everything is dead. You'll have specific spots players set up and aim at specific area's in the sky so their shots will always land on top of spawnrooms, open chokepoints or favorite spots to park vehicles. The amount of teamwork required is also a no-go. Considering the teamwork the rest of the game has a dedicated voice-channel to tell people to aim a bit higher/lower/left/right is far too much and won't be used. Better mobile artillery: Use the template for the Glaive IPC. You buy the artillery. Deploy it. Buy a designator at the artillery (Movoza once proposed this type of artillery use, and the devs actually listened!). Move to the target. Paint it. Target has some kind of warning (IPC has a glowing dot and radar visuals, but it could be anything from a visible laser that has to be trained on-target to grenade-like indicators that follow the incoming artillery shots to simple warnings that you are in a designated zone etc). Shells/guided missiles land. The advantage of this system is that it can't be used as a cheap spam wagon. The operator has to be near the enemy and can be shot to prevent the artillery from firing. It will also prevent people from feeling they couldn't have stopped the attack. Getting killed by something you can't defend against/feel you can't defend against is one of the biggest problems in a game. This is why aircraft are so hated: There's relatively little weapons that can engage them, and the weapons that do rarely have the firepower to actually kill them in time before they kill you/just escape.
my take on mobile artillery: it´s a PMB unit so get it from a pmb terminal, uses cortium for ammo meaning it needs to go back to a silo with ammosuplytower .. like a sunderer or ant it needs to be deployed which opens a terminal similar like the of the glave or orbitalstrikeuplink and gives you a markerpistol which you designate the targetarea with .. marked area and marker are visible so enemies can avoid area or disable the marker .. sounds ok or too complex? .. generally i can see this as areadenial/firesupressiontool with the dmg precision similar (or worse?) to the liberators duster ..
Personally, I'd like to see it implemented, but there are a few problems: 1. Vehicles are OP even in concept no matter what - Infantryside First jab at infantryside for the day, but is very much true. Anything that can remotely harm infantry especially from range, people will downvote as much as they can. You can make it slow, you can make it HE shells (which is more of an insult than anything else really) but no matter what, people will say it's bad because it mitigates and/or hurts their playstyle of dashing into open turf. 2. Coordinated bombardments is already a hard thing to do, taking more steps on an already slow and very vulnerable system will make it next to impractical unless you make the effect worth it, which will make infantryside hate it (See 1). 3. AoE effects should not be that effective against armor unless specified. Like say an AP shell should not have an AoE against a slow large target, even at range, or a base "Heat" shell that by default splits into multiple and each one carries a small AoE but can hurt tanks with this shotgun effect but as a result has less damage. 4. If the effect isn't going to be effective than things already in the game then it has to be versatile. Like for example, the lib can kill tanks effectively by default, moderately hurt infantry and can be used against other aircraft to an ok effect, people already claim the lib is OP, and the render range for infantry is 300 meters, so unless you tweak the shells to be it's own entity and kill at ranges farther than 300 meters and be at least as effective as the lib then the system is not worth going into. 5. Even if you have the player jump through hoops for a good effect, people will still call it BS and downvote it. Let's say you need cortium, have to be at least 400 meters away, have a spotter, have protection, make constant adjustments, enter the konami code, dance the cancan while standing on your hands, unless that effort is all worth it then it would be pointless, if the effort was worth it and it beats or matches the lib in effectiveness then people will say it's BS. 6. It IS unfun to be killed by something you can't see, prediction lines that marked where the shell was going to land would make the effect pointless, maybe if it was a generalized indicator over a line saying "I'm over here, kill me" then maybe, but it's quite the conundrum. Again, I'd like artillery because it is an objective that vehicles can do that infantry cannot, I like that, it's diversity of units accomplishing goals to help the team, but a lot of players don't want the team, they want codside, it's why nearly every patch has a vehicle nerf in it, even the next "combined arms" patch has flak armor that deflects AP rounds. They are basically going out of the way to make infantry ridiculous to kill to the point it's not worth pulling an infantry killing vehicle. I hate to say it but that's kinda what artillery is.
the only way effective mobile artillery would work in planetside 2 is if most of the players were teamwork orientated rather then 'muh k/d must be high, take no risks'. as planetside 2 is now it would be OP as a mobile field piece and as a constructable too niche and UP for the time investment of building and charging it.
Or you use similar constructions such as the Glaive Canon and OS, where you have to deploy something, then approach the target to get the shots off. I would rather have a laser-painter that makes you well visible and requires you to target the same enemy/ground for a few seconds before the shot goes off (and potentially can guide munitions to the target if it moves) then have the current little dart-shooter. A Laser-painter works more elegantly, gives the enemy more time to react and blow your face off in retaliation and thus makes it more OK to give the artillery some more power. Darts just encourage people to use an infiltrator, shoot a dart and cloak rightaway, giving practically no chance to really determine where the player holding the designator is or how to stop him (or as I do with OS's right now: Drive up on a cloaked Flash, jump off where I want to shoot, shoot right down, get back on and drive like hell. Great accuracy, and often the enemy seems to think like "hey, a Flash, let's shoot that first before looking at why my screen becomes all EMP-like").
yeah as a constructable is the only way i see it working and not being OP as for designators i believe a deployable would be best, a laser pointer might work if the beam was highly visible (somewhere around/slightly under a lancer shot, teamcolored), if it isn't then a deployable would be better. given how each player has different graphics settings an object rather then a particle effect would probably be better. as for the designator i'd restrict it, no inf and no light assaults. i'd be too easy to have one sneak around and wait till the artillery is ready to fire and aim it somewhere that put enemies in the AOE radius without letting them see the beam. (like aiming at the roof of a building as a LA right on their feet, or an inf hiding behind a crate and aiming the pointer at the crate.)
I think it could work outside of construction very easily. You buy the vehicle, deploy it, then similar to an ANT you go to the back and use a terminal to get a designator for that particular artillery (and you could potentially let anyone buy one there but make it cost resources so a death without the Arty dying is more meaningful). Then as TRslayer says use the UT laser painter style targeting. You could aim at the target itself, but if you fail to keep it on them for a short period or time it'll never fire, so unless it's a stationary vehicle/infantry you'll mostly be aiming at the ground nearby. Then there's dozens of ways to balance the power you get. I'll reference the 'nerf' side but obviously you can go the opposite way as well: The laser is highly visible, you are visible on the radar (potentially with a special marker), short-ranged laser (no 300m range target-painting), slow projectiles, sound/visual warnings such as when you are within a certain distance of a targeted area/to indicate an oncomming shell/using grenade-type indicators on the shells so players see them incomming and can track their arc/a warning signal when a laser is being used nearby/tracers/shells visible on the radar, low AOE, low damage per shot, low magazine size, long reloads, large COF, ability to let the shells self-destruct if the laser-designator holder dies... The list goes on and on. If you only used the one's I named a little you would already have an UP artillery piece. So if you mix-and-match you could make various artillery pieces with various power with various costs and difficulty to use and all balanced. Use a faction-coloured version of the heal/revive ray. That would solve things wouldn't it? I never heard of anyone having more lag when there's Medics around. As I mentioned, there's a lot of ways to make sure the target knows he's being fired upon. So many that it just makes the entire artillery useless. There's nothing wrong with the ability to sneak attack a target if you manage to get in a good position, especially if you can't OHK the target and there's plenty of ways the target can figure out he's under attack beforehand.
