19 replies to this topic

[Reitrix]

Preface: I am ok with the level of damage Artillery and Air Strikes cause.

But please, for the love of Mecha Jeebus, please enforce a global 2 minute cooldown on Strikes.

Just had a match whereby we baited an Arty strike, it came down, we pushed their ridge, got another Arty strike to the face a few seconds after, Weathered this one, took a kill, and then was cockpitted by an arty strike placed on the ridge below, but the strike itself landed on the ridge above thanks to firing angles.

So while i agree that the damage is fine, the firing delay could use tweaking, but PLEASE enforce a longer cooldown between strikes.

[SpiralFace]

2 minute cool down is a bit extreme considering that Arty is only a major threat to the "deathball" syle of play.

But 10 seconds is indeed WAY too short.

I would be all up for 30 seconds to a minute global cooldown as I agree that only a few second delay between shellings is not good. (Seriously, an arty bombards a spot for 5-6 seconds, your already halfway done with your cooldown by the time the shelling stops.)

2 minutes though is too long. The POINT of arty is to punish people who "ball up" into tight clusters. Having a 2 minute cooldown on top of a minute long opening cooldown, will make them nearly irrelevant to the deathball in a game that usually only lasts 6-8 minutes. The Deathballs will just weather the storm and know they have a 2 minute window to continue steamrolling in the ball when instead, Arty should be potent enough to attempt to break up the ball.

[Mcchuggernaut]

Damage is fine. The problem is that if placed correctly, you can't do anything about it. Look just between someone's legs or at their back with your reticule when you drop one, and the enemy can't see the smoke until they have already been hit. Happens all the time, and gives lights just one more cheap shot because they can circle and drop one behind you extremely easily. We need an auditory "Incoming artillery/air strike!" warning from Bitching Betty like we have for missiles if we are in the targeted blast radius. Hell, make it hurt if you don't move or blunder into one, that's fine. But when someone can kill or cripple you in one shot without a reasonable counter, then it isn't balanced. It especially screws big, slow mechs. Lights and mediums almost never get hit with strikes because they are always moving fast.

[Bilbo]

I'm going to go with the obvious question. Why would you push over a ridge, from a known position, knowing the enemy has arty/airstrike?

[Reitrix]

Bilbo, on 27 February 2014 - 09:53 AM, said:

I'm going to go with the obvious question. Why would you push over a ridge, from a known position, knowing the enemy has arty/airstrike?

Because in every game ever, there are 12 -24 Artillery/Air Strikes? We had the numerical advantage, so we pressed it. We could not see the smoke from the other 2 artys because they were placed on the ridgeline below us.

Would you have preferred to wait behind a rock while you had all 10 remaining hostiles, including their Light Lance, stuck between 3 Lances and a ridge? We have no way of knowing or guessing how many Strikes are on the field. We don't even know when a friendly drops one.

Increasing the timer between strikes keeps the Strikes as being dangerous to deathballs, without letting you drop 24 Strikes back to back over 4 minutes.
The damage is fine. Its the ridiculously low cooldown between shots that bothers me.

[Bilbo]

Reitrix, on 27 February 2014 - 10:14 AM, said:

Because in every game ever, there are 12 -24 Artillery/Air Strikes? We had the numerical advantage, so we pressed it. We could not see the smoke from the other 2 artys because they were placed on the ridgeline below us.

Would you have preferred to wait behind a rock while you had all 10 remaining hostiles, including their Light Lance, stuck between 3 Lances and a ridge? We have no way of knowing or guessing how many Strikes are on the field. We don't even know when a friendly drops one.

Increasing the timer between strikes keeps the Strikes as being dangerous to deathballs, without letting you drop 24 Strikes back to back over 4 minutes.
The damage is fine. Its the ridiculously low cooldown between shots that bothers me.

I would have found another way around whether I thought they had airstrikes or not.

[Redshift2k5]

I agree, I think the cooldown is a bit too generous and there should be more time between strikes. force them to be more strategic and less spam. with a significantly longer cooldown you want to make sure you use it at the right time and it awards skill/tactical thinking more than merely spamming as many as you can.

[Lukoi Banacek]

Just a side bar thought but maybe this super short CD contributes to only 1% of the playerbase playing 12's where strikes are essentially a requirement to be competitive.

[Reitrix]

Bilbo, on 27 February 2014 - 10:17 AM, said:

I would have found another way around whether I thought they had airstrikes or not.

Alpine. Yeah, no. "Going around" would mean traversing 2/3rds of the map,dropping down the cliffs at i9, and trying to come back up the cliffs on the opposite side. 5 minutes later, when we arrived at our new position, we'd find the enemy gone to a more defensible location ...
Or, we could so a we did and win by pushing over the ridge and into their faces. We got close enough that the third arty that took out my cockpit ALSO blew the legs off the enemy Champion Stalker who was nearby.

So back to the topic at hand, increasing the cooldown between Strikes is a good thing. As Redshift2k5 says, it'd push the Strikes to more of a tactical choice.

Lukoi, on 27 February 2014 - 10:28 AM, said:

Just a side bar thought but maybe this super short CD contributes to only 1% of the playerbase playing 12's where strikes are essentially a requirement to be competitive.

The game i used as my example was a solo drop for me. if there were premades on the other side, i wouldn't know.
Premade or not, nearly everyone carries a pair of Strikes if they have the module slots for it.

Edited by Reitrix, 27 February 2014 - 10:30 AM.

[Lukoi Banacek]

Premades in public queue are not what I was referring to. I meant 12-on-12 team play. PGI noted that less than 1% of the playerbase participates in that queue.

[Fut]

Mcchuggernaut, on 27 February 2014 - 09:51 AM, said:

Damage is fine. The problem is that if placed correctly, you can't do anything about it. Look just between someone's legs or at their back with your reticule when you drop one, and the enemy can't see the smoke until they have already been hit. Happens all the time, and gives lights just one more cheap shot because they can circle and drop one behind you extremely easily. We need an auditory "Incoming artillery/air strike!" warning from Bitching Betty like we have for missiles if we are in the targeted blast radius. Hell, make it hurt if you don't move or blunder into one, that's fine. But when someone can kill or cripple you in one shot without a reasonable counter, then it isn't balanced. It especially screws big, slow mechs. Lights and mediums almost never get hit with strikes because they are always moving fast.

Should we also have a warning for when somebody is shooting ACs or PPCs at us as well?
I mean, some of the Meta-Dudes can kill or cripple some mechs in one shot, and there isn't a real counter to it (twist).

In case it wasn't obvious (italics... did it work?), I was just kidding.
No more visual/audio warnings please.

[wwiiogre]

Having recently been involved in three games where arty was spammed on me personally. Meaning I received more than 4 strike attempts in a row in each game.

The cooldown needs to be a minimum of 1 minute I would also like add that for pin point accuracy TAG should be used as well. Currently arty strikes perfectly no matter what. That is ridiculous to say the least. No scatter whatsoever, drops first time, perfectly every time. Almost like science fiction. No Murphy involved. You can even drop them from more 2km or past all weapon ranges.

Enforcing TAG as the designator, which is used for arrow missiles and arty and bomb strikes in this timeline, in BT, why do we have a super weapon that is now so over used it seems I take more damage from arty than actual mech fire in some games. I have been killed entirely by arty/air on Alpine before I could even fire a shot at the enemy. And they hit me with 4 strikes and like has been said they were behind me so I didn't even know I was gonna get hit.

Currently arty/air is a bit OP because delivery is unlimited line of sight. Cool down is entirely to small a duration. There is no incoming arty strike or air strike that should be available. If we can get Betty to tell us about LRM's she should tell us about arty/air.

So damage is about right. Implement Betty, implement longer cooldown and implement TAG and you have a system that exposes the original mech, he has to hold TAG until impact and I think we have a viable system that is not too powerful yet still useful while needing a bit of skill to use and forcing a team with bunches of strikes to plan accordingly.

Nice arty kill on me Ellen Ripley, made me laugh hard when we were the only two mechs left both of us cored, facing down just around a corner. And as I charged forward you popped arty in my path and being the lumbering Atlas I was I could not push thru the blast nor back out. Since you dropped the strike just outside of my sight path. Well played, but if you needed TAG to make that work, you would have had to designate and stay within range and I could have seen the tag beam, plus Betty would have warned me and I would have survived the arty strike and finished your cored mech and won the game. Alas, if and could of do not work.

But if PGI is reading this, anything that calls for more skill to use is a good thing. Betty would be helpful here as well.

Chris

Edited by wwiiogre, 27 February 2014 - 11:05 AM.

[Duncan Fisher]

wwiiogre, on 27 February 2014 - 11:03 AM, said:

Having recently been involved in three games where arty was spammed on me personally. Meaning I received more than 4 strike attempts in a row in each game.

The cooldown needs to be a minimum of 1 minute I would also like add that for pin point accuracy TAG should be used as well. Currently arty strikes perfectly no matter what. That is ridiculous to say the least. No scatter whatsoever, drops first time, perfectly every time. Almost like science fiction. No Murphy involved. You can even drop them from more 2km or past all weapon ranges.

Enforcing TAG as the designator, which is used for arrow missiles and arty and bomb strikes in this timeline, in BT, why do we have a super weapon that is now so over used it seems I take more damage from arty than actual mech fire in some games. I have been killed entirely by arty/air on Alpine before I could even fire a shot at the enemy. And they hit me with 4 strikes and like has been said they were behind me so I didn't even know I was gonna get hit.

Currently arty/air is a bit OP because delivery is unlimited line of sight. Cool down is entirely to small a duration. There is no incoming arty strike or air strike that should be available. If we can get Betty to tell us about LRM's she should tell us about arty/air.

So damage is about right. Implement Betty, implement longer cooldown and implement TAG and you have a system that exposes the original mech, he has to hold TAG until impact and I think we have a viable system that is not too powerful yet still useful while needing a bit of skill to use and forcing a team with bunches of strikes to plan accordingly.

Nice arty kill on me Ellen Ripley, made me laugh hard when we were the only two mechs left both of us cored, facing down just around a corner. And as I charged forward you popped arty in my path and being the lumbering Atlas I was I could not push thru the blast nor back out. Since you dropped the strike just outside of my sight path. Well played, but if you needed TAG to make that work, you would have had to designate and stay within range and I could have seen the tag beam, plus Betty would have warned me and I would have survived the arty strike and finished your cored mech and won the game. Alas, if and could of do not work.

But if PGI is reading this, anything that calls for more skill to use is a good thing. Betty would be helpful here as well.

Chris

hmmmm I really like the idea of TAG being necessary to use these support modules. It makes tons of sense fluff-wise, and it enforces a slight penalty (loss of 1ton + 1energy) to taking arty/air, which is arguably worth more than a single module slot. In fact, it almost makes too much sense, so I doubt PGI would ever implement something like that

[Khobai]

Quote

The cooldown needs to be a minimum of 1 minute

But theres 12 players on a team. Average game length is about 8-10 minutes. If the cooldown was a minute then not everyone would get a chance to use their artillery.

Assuming everyone on the team has both an airstrike and an artillery, in order to give everyone a chance to use both, the longest the global cooldown could be is about 20-25 seconds. Which still isnt long enough to fix artillery spam IMO.

The best solution IMO is simply not to allow everyone to use both artillery/airstrikes without restriction. This can be done through role warfare, where only command/support mechs can use those consumables. Other roles like strike/assault or scout/pursuit wouldnt be able to use them.

Edited by Khobai, 27 February 2014 - 11:57 AM.

[Tw1stedMonkey]

Reitrix, on 27 February 2014 - 10:14 AM, said:

Because in every game ever, there are 12 -24 Artillery/Air Strikes? We had the numerical advantage, so we pressed it. We could not see the smoke from the other 2 artys because they were placed on the ridgeline below us.

Would you have preferred to wait behind a rock while you had all 10 remaining hostiles, including their Light Lance, stuck between 3 Lances and a ridge? We have no way of knowing or guessing how many Strikes are on the field. We don't even know when a friendly drops one.

Increasing the timer between strikes keeps the Strikes as being dangerous to deathballs, without letting you drop 24 Strikes back to back over 4 minutes.
The damage is fine. Its the ridiculously low cooldown between shots that bothers me.

Don't attempt to argue with some of these people. If Jesus himself came down for the second coming and told them to their face that artillery is not actually fine and needs a few tweaks to make it really balanced, they would still defend it and tell Jesus to L2P. I'll never understand those people that can't see beyond their own bias and realize there are levels of unbalanced besides totally overpowered and fine. Artillery is close to fine but has too much single target damage potential without enough warning. No mech should ever take more than 80 damage from one strike and no individual component should take more than 10-20 from each shot (and no 2 shots should hit the same component.) it shouldn't randomly snipe off components unless they already have the armor stripped off (for assault mechs at least.) I've lost both arms in a cataphract with out losing the armor beforehand on either and one was still in yellow-ish orange armor from one artillery strike.

Edited by Tw1stedMonkey, 27 February 2014 - 02:40 PM.

[Charons Little Helper]

I think they're fine as is - but they should cost more than a module slot to take. (I see a purpose for the command console!)

[Mechteric]

30 seconds would be best, 2 mins is way too long and 10 seconds wayyyy to short between them.

[wanderer]

You want TAG-designated arty and bombing?

Great. I'll take putting 6-10 shells directly on my target. That's what guided rounds do, you know. Basically, it'd obliterate a target.

Not to say it isn't fun- I've TAG-guided 10 Arrow IV missiles at once to a single target. It basically evaporated. But the target sure would be torked- not to mention that even if they didn't hit the TAG'd target directly, I could pretty much keep it on a moving target and neatly keep it at ground zero anyway for the resulting blast template.

[wwiiogre]

And Wanderer, by using tag, You not only have to see your target, but have to keep on target with TAG the entire time the round is in flight or lose the shot.

So say you TAG a mech, then the arty shot is fired. Bitchin Betty then warns the person, he is in a ppc/ac5 meta phract, runs out of the arty zone (but he now can't since it is guided instead of fire and forget), but he now can find you and shoot you in the face. With a 30-45 second delay between, that phract cannot be spammed.

I think the Command Console should be needed to carry more than either a single arty/air/uav so any mech could have a single of any of those three. Only a mech with the 3ton command console could carry multiples and that should also decrease or eliminate the delay between strikes.

There are so many ways to balance, this, while staying true to lore and finding an actual use for the Command Console, which did in reality allow a commander to counter ecm in the same way a bap does, but also to coordinate Satellite feeds, arty strikes, air strikes, etc. It would bring back role warfare.

Chris

[Abaddonis]

Allow AMS to shoot down arty/air strikes. Percentage based. One AMS won't negate a strike, but many will lessen the damage. Strikes are much more common now and if they remain as is, will only become more popular. This game doesn't need more applied damage.