When will? - Mortars

I'd love seeing mortars in this game where you can suppress large areas with a small group of units.

I'd much prefer an arching weapon and south east Indar is in sore need of something that can hit on the cliffs.

With a mortar you'd be able to hit those units that hide behind the rocks and occasionally pop up to fire off a dumb rocket or two. Arching weaponry we already got, Fury and so on.

Here is a self propelled mortar:

I've thought about designing a small transport with a built in artillery piece. It would hold half that of a sunderer but carry more armor. Be a little slower because it will be tracked vehicle. And the front would have a fix'd mount mortar (can angle up and down but you have to turn the whole tank to aim left or right).
But I doubt anything like that would get anywhere near the game simply based on the fact that people hate splash damage and can't stand whats in game now.

an IFV type vehicle with access to a mortar, the C75 Viper, and an autocannon (Obviously not at the same time) would be awesome.

Harasser chassis would be perfect for a vehicle mounted mortar. SoE wouldnt even have to develop anything but a version of the Fury that could be controlled at more extreme vertical angles to be effective. Ofc, a new sight screen would have to be created to make the whole mortar idea working (staring at the sky and firing off nades not seeing the battlefield would be kinda boring).

However, I'd love seeing infantry carried mortars. Setting up, manning and firing would require a lot more time than for example the Mana turrets and the splash damage would be more of the suppressing kind.

look no further than a HE Magrider

Hopefully never because we have enough "suppressive" fire from floating aircraft and camping tanks.

That suppression isnt that bad, you can easily counter it if you know what you're doing. Mortars would add a tactical element to the battles.

I'd like to see an "orbital strike" kind of ability, so a platoon leader can use it to clear difficult to reach areas, where a couple of enemy squads are camping and locking down the area. Good examples are the rock formations at Crossroads, Regent rock and clifs in SE Indar. Also it should give a warning to the enemy so they can clear out, so it turn into more of a area of denial tool than a weapon.

Hopefully never.

PS1's Flail would like to have a word with you...

Let's be realistic here - artillery doesn't promote tactics, it promotes spam. At least aircraft and tanks require relative LOS.

It's almost like everyone forgets that you can put the M60-G on a Harrasser, or a Sunderer in tandem. What's wrong, tired of the same flavour and looking for something different?

Also, the old C75 Viper that I loved was the closest thing. It got changed into a generig HEAT round though. My C75 Viper loadout was called the "Viper Light Artillery" and that's how I used it. Either as an IFV along side and close to infantry or far from infantry in a suppressive fashion. It wasn't so much as "sniping infantry from distance" and more of a "dump mags at clumps to injure them and make them back off to their sunderer while infantry push up and eliminate the wounded/chip at the sunderer."

The only thing about the old c75 Viper that was off was the low projectile velocity. If i was in charge of weapon design I would have increased the velocity of the C75 up to near where it is now but increased the bullet drop so that it fell VERY quickly, greatly limiting its' range. I posted an idea about this for max weapons.

You all argue against it like ONLY the enemy will use it against you and your Squad/Outfit. What we need is more ways to win a battle, not less. If all we had were fists then the majority would get bored after the first 12 hours. Infiltrators would have a even bigger role if we had mortars ingame, spotting and even take out those lobbing peskies.

In all mmo's where mortars were introduced everyone was afraid it would be unfair/annoying or simply game breaking but in the end it just added to the whole feel of a battlefield.

Can't tell if you're being serious. What you just described is exactly what was in PS1 (other than it being a platoon leader ability and rather something you unlock with Command Rank).

Also, the devs have already said orbital strikes are coming eventually. They might back down from that, though.

I didn't pay PS1, but wasn't the Flail artillery? I think what the OP is talking about (or at least my interpretation of what the OP is talking about) is something with a range of only a couple hundred meters and a wicked projectile arc, just for dislodging those pesky AV nests.

Well, more towards the artillery side of things, yeah. But the point about spam is still valid. BF3 had mortars, which were annoying as all ****. I guess I'm not understanding why mortars add anything that tanks with splash damage, aircraft with overhead spam and splash damage, UBGLs, and vehicles with Furies don't give you enough ways to indirectly spam enemies.

True true, the way I would do it is pretty much take a Bulldog, reduce the RoF, lock it into a +15 to 90 degree range, and make the camera point forward at all times. It wouldn't really change things terribly, but it would be cool, make SOE money, and be nice to have in the very rare situation that you would need it.

Tl;DR Why not?

The closest you can get is a C75 Viper.

With every kind of explosive damage that is in the game at the moment and being killed in the spawn room bug,

I don't think we will get artillery.

Give me the Artillery from BF3 and the FunShipGunShip.

Just redesign all the bases lol!

Esamir would be ok though.

No mortars for the love of god.

There is already little cover in this game, We don't need 20 people spamming bombs on the few cover spots from 500m away all day long.