16 replies to this topic

[Pjwned]

So, there are 2 main things that stand out to me about artillery strikes:

• The huge randomness of where shots land
  
• The ability to place a strike behind somebody (where obviously they can't see it) and cripple their mech, if not outright destroying it by a RNG headshot or a couple shots on a slightly exposed torso

Both of these things are a problem because of the way artillery shots land in a big circle around the red smoke, so just change it so they land in a cone pattern and VOILA, both problems are solved. It doesn't even need to be a narrow cone, it could be something like 160 or even 170 degrees around and it would be a big improvement due to being more consistent and less cheesy while still being fairly powerful.

Edited by Pjwned, 13 April 2014 - 11:47 PM.

[PhoenixFire55]

You have your teammates to tell you that there is a strike near/behind you. Always happens when people are on comms. If not on comms ... well, actually moving instead of sitting in one spot helps a lot. So ... pretty much working as intended (no sarcasm).

On another note ... arty/airstrike should be limited to mechs with command console, and to twice per match tops for each.

[Pjwned]

PhoenixFire55, on 14 April 2014 - 12:00 AM, said:

You have your teammates to tell you that there is a strike near/behind you. Always happens when people are on comms. If not on comms ... well, actually moving instead of sitting in one spot helps a lot. So ... pretty much working as intended (no sarcasm).

On another note ... arty/airstrike should be limited to mechs with command console, and to twice per match tops for each.

I don't see why I should need to be constantly moving (especially if I'm near a hot fighting zone) just so I can potentially avoid unseen hazards that literally come flying out of the sky from nowhere. It could even take less time for shots to land to compensate for the change, but as it is now it's stupid and feels like RNG decided to kill me because of the way artillery shots land.

[PhoenixFire55]

Pjwned, on 14 April 2014 - 12:21 AM, said:

I don't see why I should need to be constantly moving (especially if I'm near a hot fighting zone) just so I can potentially avoid unseen hazards that literally come flying out of the sky from nowhere. It could even take less time for shots to land to compensate for the change, but as it is now it's stupid and feels like RNG decided to kill me because of the way artillery shots land.

Its not you who needs to constantly move, its everyone.

The reason arty/airstrikes were added to the game is to try and minimize the sit-in-one-place-jumpsnipe-hillhump-take-a-poke-shot-with-huge-alpha-strike type of gameplay this game degraded to. As a person who played in closed beta I can assure you that game was far more diverse and far more fun back there. This game is meant to be different from your typical FPS where you sit in cover and take occasional shots. Mechs are supposed to be running around each other not play peek-a-boo for the entire match.

Same can be said about lack of any tactical variance between matches. Skirmish mode, assault mode, even conquest mode its same thing time after time ... huge blop of mechs vs huge blop of mechs. Arty is supposedly discourages you to form giant assault deathballs, which is good.

If smb drops a strike on you it usually means that...
1) You are in a big group of slow mechs bunched up together
2) You are sitting in one spot sniping
You deserve to get one in both 1 and 2.

And as I said ... you can clearly see the red smoke / airplane. If you are getting hit by a strike in a light or a medium ... its totally your fault. You should be moving, period. If you are getting hit in a heavy, its most likely also your fault as you've been either taking pop shots from same spot or stayed too close to your assaults. Assault mechs are different story, but again, if you spread out at least 50-70m or so from each other arty will hit one mech only if any at all.

There are some people who totally abuse the strikes, as a light fighting an assault 1 on 1 you can totally wreck him with a successful arty strike with zero effort involved without him being able to do anything. Same way you can drop a strike into bunch of lights or even single light capping resource point / MFB from 1000+ meters by just looking at cap meter so you can know smth is actually there. But ...

If devs finally get their sh!t together and restrict arty to command console mechs as well as limit its use to twice per match and forbid the use of it on base/resource points any abuse will be gone. People will think twice before doing a strike or even actually consider if its worth taking in the first place as you'll have to sacrifice tonnage for it.

As for the actual mechanics ... well, its realistic. Just like in RL when artillery hits a certain area it can devastate enemies there, same time it can totally miss them all. The slower the targets, the better chances to hit them. Yes, arty can do an occasional headshot and kill you, but it happens like 1 time out of 100, hardly a cause for concern even if it is annoying.

Edited by PhoenixFire55, 14 April 2014 - 01:07 AM.

[Pjwned]

PhoenixFire55, on 14 April 2014 - 01:04 AM, said:

Its not you who needs to constantly move, its everyone.

The reason arty/airstrikes were added to the game is to try and minimize the sit-in-one-place-jumpsnipe-hillhump-take-a-poke-shot-with-huge-alpha-strike type of gameplay this game degraded to. As a person who played in closed beta I can assure you that game was far more diverse and far more fun back there. This game is meant to be different from your typical FPS where you sit in cover and take occasional shots. Mechs are supposed to be running around each other not play peek-a-boo for the entire match.

There is a role for snipers, they shouldn't be countered by strikes so easily just because of hill humping pop tarts.

Quote

Same can be said about lack of any tactical variance between matches. Skirmish mode, assault mode, even conquest mode its same thing time after time ... huge blop of mechs vs huge blop of mechs. Arty is supposedly discourages you to form giant assault deathballs, which is good.

If smb drops a strike on you it usually means that...
1) You are in a big group of slow mechs bunched up together
2) You are sitting in one spot sniping
You deserve to get one in both 1 and 2.

And as I said ... you can clearly see the red smoke / airplane. If you are getting hit by a strike in a light or a medium ... its totally your fault. You should be moving, period. If you are getting hit in a heavy, its most likely also your fault as you've been either taking pop shots from same spot or stayed too close to your assaults. Assault mechs are different story, but again, if you spread out at least 50-70m or so from each other arty will hit one mech only if any at all.

Or they drop a strike behind you from potentially infinite range and you get owned for it even though there's no other visible threat.

Quote

There are some people who totally abuse the strikes, as a light fighting an assault 1 on 1 you can totally wreck him with a successful arty strike with zero effort involved without him being able to do anything. Same way you can drop a strike into bunch of lights or even single light capping resource point / MFB from 1000+ meters by just looking at cap meter so you can know smth is actually there. But ...

My suggestion would cut down on that sort of abuse because any potential target should be able to see where the strike is placed instead of getting annihilated for doing their job.

Quote

If devs finally get their sh!t together and restrict arty to command console mechs as well as limit its use to twice per match and forbid the use of it on base/resource points any abuse will be gone. People will think twice before doing a strike or even actually consider if its worth taking in the first place as you'll have to sacrifice tonnage for it.

I don't necessarily disagree with the command console idea, I just don't see why my idea is bad.

Quote

As for the actual mechanics ... well, its realistic. Just like in RL when artillery hits a certain area it can devastate enemies there, same time it can totally miss them all. The slower the targets, the better chances to hit them. Yes, arty can do an occasional headshot and kill you, but it happens like 1 time out of 100, hardly a cause for concern even if it is annoying.

Real life mechanics shouldn't mandate game mechanics, and yes even those "occasional" headshots are still lame and a problem, especially considering strikes are far more likely to get headshots (due to randomness and the way shells work) than any other weapon in the game.

[Dawnstealer]

PhoenixFire55, on 14 April 2014 - 12:00 AM, said:

On another note ... arty/airstrike should be limited to mechs with command console, and to twice per match tops for each.

Oh, man: this.

I had a game the other night where I was hit by three arty and airstrike hits, back-to-back-to-back. Another player on my team was destroyed by the same thing. NOT the same three strikes. The entire opposing team must have taken at least two arties a piece. It was a bit much.

[DeathlyEyes]

PhoenixFire55, on 14 April 2014 - 01:04 AM, said:

If smb drops a strike on you it usually means that...
1) You are in a big group of slow mechs bunched up together
2) You are sitting in one spot sniping
You deserve to get one in both 1 and 2.

No one deserves it. The game is trying to eliminate play styles instead of balancing them. Besides sometimes you have to sit in one spot while you wait for LRM rain to end. The game really needs a mechanic like almost every other first person shooter with ordinance in it. A warning when you are near an ordinance. Battlefield, Call of Duty, Titanfall and nearly every other shooter has a mechanic where a little grenade icon flashes warning you to get out of the way because dying from ordinance is the single most annoying thing to happen.

[PhoenixFire55]

SLDF DeathlyEyes, on 15 April 2014 - 03:47 PM, said:

No one deserves it. The game is trying to eliminate play styles instead of balancing them. Besides sometimes you have to sit in one spot while you wait for LRM rain to end. The game really needs a mechanic like almost every other first person shooter with ordinance in it. A warning when you are near an ordinance. Battlefield, Call of Duty, Titanfall and nearly every other shooter has a mechanic where a little grenade icon flashes warning you to get out of the way because dying from ordinance is the single most annoying thing to happen.

As much as I am for balancing instead of restrictions and limits, and as much as I like the sniper style gameplay in all games, I don't think that this is smth the mechwarrior game needs. Nor is it "lore" and "canon". After all, this game is supposed to be different from the same typical FPS titles as BF, CoD. Right now, its not all that different.

[Mystere]

PhoenixFire55, on 14 April 2014 - 12:00 AM, said:

On another note ... arty/airstrike should be limited to mechs with command console, and to twice per match tops for each.

Limiting them to just 2 per match makes them ineffective against murder balls and poptarts hiding behind cover.

SLDF DeathlyEyes, on 15 April 2014 - 03:47 PM, said:

No one deserves it. The game is trying to eliminate play styles instead of balancing them.

What play style is artillery trying to eliminate outside of it's intended purpose?

SLDF DeathlyEyes, on 15 April 2014 - 03:47 PM, said:

The game really needs a mechanic like almost every other first person shooter with ordinance in it. A warning when you are near an ordinance. Battlefield, Call of Duty, Titanfall and nearly every other shooter has a mechanic where a little grenade icon flashes warning you to get out of the way because dying from ordinance is the single most annoying thing to happen.

Or just develop your situational awareness. Or use team work. Or ...

[Saint Scarlett Johan]

I'd like to see Arty changed. No more smoke, but a more realistic ToT. As an artilleryman, I'm glad arty hurts. But it does suck to get spammed by it. Realistic ToT for indirect fire is between 15-45 seconds depending on the angle of the fire mission and the range to target.

Or, if no removal of smoke, the ability to get cheap (~5000 Cbills) red smoke modules I can put up under enemy mechs just to make them panic.

[PhoenixFire55]

Mystere, on 19 April 2014 - 07:17 PM, said:

Limiting them to just 2 per match makes them ineffective against murder balls and poptarts hiding behind cover.

You prefer 24 strikes a game one way and 24 the other way?

[Mystere]

PhoenixFire55, on 20 April 2014 - 12:54 AM, said:

You prefer 24 strikes a game one way and 24 the other way?

I have no problem with either or both teams having a full compliment of artillery and air strikes. But then again I also had no qualms about facing an all-assault/heavy team, unlike those crybabies raised in an "Everyone is a winner!" environment that caused 3/3/3/3 to be conceived. Is that clear enough?

Edited by Mystere, 20 April 2014 - 08:35 AM.

[PhoenixFire55]

Mystere, on 20 April 2014 - 08:34 AM, said:

Is that clear enough?

Yep ...

Mystere, on 20 April 2014 - 08:34 AM, said:

I have no problem with either or both teams having a full compliment of artillery and air strikes.

If you think this game should be all about who has more/better artillery crews then I believe there is nothing else to talk about.

[Mystere]

PhoenixFire55, on 20 April 2014 - 09:02 AM, said:

If you think this game should be all about who has more/better artillery crews then I believe there is nothing else to talk about.

Scouts + Brawlers + Missile Launchers + Snipers + Artillery + Air Strikes + ... ---> Combined Arms.

Or are you unfamiliar with the concept?

[Davers]

Dawnstealer, on 15 April 2014 - 12:16 PM, said:

Oh, man: this.

I had a game the other night where I was hit by three arty and airstrike hits, back-to-back-to-back. Another player on my team was destroyed by the same thing. NOT the same three strikes. The entire opposing team must have taken at least two arties a piece. It was a bit much.

If all 6 were fired back to back then it would have taken a minute to get then all off. Maybe time between strikes could be increased a bit, but I don't think it's too much.

JohanssenJr, on 19 April 2014 - 07:45 PM, said:

I'd like to see Arty changed. No more smoke, but a more realistic ToT. As an artilleryman, I'm glad arty hurts. But it does suck to get spammed by it. Realistic ToT for indirect fire is between 15-45 seconds depending on the angle of the fire mission and the range to target.

Or, if no removal of smoke, the ability to get cheap (~5000 Cbills) red smoke modules I can put up under enemy mechs just to make them panic.

Red Smoke Consumables are on the way.

So are deployable turrets. So maybe they will replace some of those arty strikes.

[Gyrok]

Neg, but they should take the cockpit hit box out of the RNG for it. Maybe take it down to 30 damage per tick...

[Bashfulsalamander]

Until this Game gets VOIP solo players will suffer depending on play style. That being said its not hard to pin a person to cover using LRM then use an arty strike on them. My opinion is they should add different way(s) of warning such as Audio warnings or even minimap warnings this would make the person abandon his cover as intended, while giving the player a fair chance to not get completely blown up. As for damage... its artillery its going to hurt. By the way I heard from some one that the pilot sees what is around the mech through sensors on the mech, so why would the pilot not detect the smoke signal?

Edited by Bashfulsalamander, 10 May 2014 - 03:31 AM.