3 replies to this topic

[TOGSolid]

Currently the Artillery and Air Strike consumables are only ever used by people who have never used them before and don't know better. Their damage is awful but boosting their damage to useful levels would easily render them overpowered. The solution to this problem involves getting rid of the idea of them being damage dealers and instead make them into status effect style weapons. By doing this, you would provide much more variety, increase the tactical options, and make two useless modules suddenly desirable.

Artillery could become IR Smoke - Exactly what it says on the tin. A smoke shell that not only provides visual cover but would defeat IR vision until the smoke dissipated.

Air Strikes could become Napalm Bombs - Instead of doing damage this instead makes the affected area have the same effect as the caldera on caustic for the duration of the Napalm effect. Heat would be very hard to dissipate while standing in this area. This allows for an area denial weapon to exist without having to actually damage mechs directly.

Another option could be something like an ECM effect that shuts down everyone's HUD and sensor modules in the area for a period of time. I'm sure some of you probably have some more ideas for other forms of ordinance so feel free to suggest them!

It could also be possible to have Artillery and Air Strikes have access to the same effects but have Artillery do a weaker, but wider area effect and have Air Strikes do a stronger but more focused effect. In the case of smoke, the air version could persist longer, for instance.

[Anyone00]

Yeah the ability to pop smoke is something I would like to see either as artillery or mech mortars. If artillery: a separate consumable on a separate timer that comes in 'stacks' of three.

Airstrikes: having napalm strikes are not mutually exclusive to a direct damage form. My damaging airstrike idea: the aircraft can be shot down but the can target a Narc beacons and I don't mean the Narc is the center of the strip the narc'd mech takes the entire thing. But change it so EMC counter acts Narc beacons. Basically being narc'd should provide an 'OH! CRAP!' moment.

Another idea for a aircraft delivered consumable: Holographic Decoy.
Aircraft comes in and drops a (relatively) small rover that projects a hologram of the deploying mech that travels in a line; it also provides false sensor information and even appears to get hit be weapons (but they still pass through the decoy). Make the snipers give away their position and other fun applications.

[Pater Mors]

I actually like the idea of Arty and Airstrikes doing significant damage. The drawbacks to using them are big, long wait times and a huge frackin' marker.

They need to do reasonably painful damage over a decent sized area. If that happens, they become an area denial weapon used for things like flushing people out of cover or keeping people off your cap which is exactly the intended purpose of Artillery.

Airstrikes should be far more precise in terms of how they hit but they should also do far more damage. Enough to obliterate anything up to probably a 60 ton mech if they're stupid enough to be standing in the strike zone (and miss the giant red flare).

I would also support different types like smoke/napalm/EMP etc.

[Petroshka]

Let us have artillery as it should function: Area denial and suppression.

- Artillery lasts for 1-2 minutes, hitting a large area.
- Mechs hit by artillery suffer severe cockpit shake.
- Mechs will at first take little damage, over time, this damage goes up. Ignoring an artillery strike could mean death.


This way, artillery functions as area denial - mechs will not want to walk into an ongoing artillery barrage, mechs in it will try to find a fast way out. It also functions as suppression - mechs in the barrage have a hard time aiming.

And yes!!!! Smoke. IR and regular (maybe IR smoke is Advanced Artillery module / consumable).

Smoke (IR/reg) launchers on mechs too please. So many times, i've rolled over a ridge only to say "oh ****... wish i could pop smoke right about now..."

Edited by Petroshka, 21 June 2013 - 03:56 PM.