21 replies to this topic

[Valdor Constantine]

just out of curiosity would there be potential down the lines to adding in an opption to calling in artillary of some. maybe from a friendly dropship or ground artillary team. if this has already been discused i appologise.

[Tannhauser Gate]

They are giong to have TAG, beacons, and shared radar data for players to coordinate attacks. I havent heard anything about having non-player assets like artillery or dropships assisting in that way. My guess is no... at least not yet.

Edited by LakeDaemon, 24 January 2012 - 08:20 AM.

[Nerts]

Get one of your buddies to pack some Arrow IV artillery missiles.

[Elizander]

I am hoping they will allow LRMs to work like artillery even if just to rain down missiles randomly at a targeted area on the map.

[Valdor Constantine]

that is true maybe we will be able to use mech capable arillary compatable with TAG tech but i think it would bring and added element to the game to be able to call in a missle strikes into an area. be it Land mines pods, Nepalm, carpet bombing, or Arrow IV missles or old school high explosive artillary.

[TheRulesLawyer]

I wouldn't mind lights being able to call in off board artillery strikes.

[Aegis Kleais]

I thought there was confirmation that Commander module Mechs would be capable of calling in off-map artillery already? I wouldn't mind if beacons could be used to help bring those shells in on target, but I'm of the belief that artillery should never track a target. Once it is fired on trajectory, any target that moves out of it's Area of Effect would be safe (and there should be enough flight time to allow even the heaviest of Mechs to get out of harms way)

Of course, Mr. Dumb dumb who sits put is just ripe for getting spotted and shelled with artillery, but you have to be mindful of danger-close situations where teammates in the area may take friendly fire from such a powerful ability. Not to mention there needs to be a very decent recharge and initial cost to the Mech to even support the ability.

[Valdor Constantine]

Aegis Kleais™, on 24 January 2012 - 09:52 AM, said:

I thought there was confirmation that Commander module Mechs would be capable of calling in off-map artillery already? I wouldn't mind if beacons could be used to help bring those shells in on target, but I'm of the belief that artillery should never track a target. Once it is fired on trajectory, any target that moves out of it's Area of Effect would be safe (and there should be enough flight time to allow even the heaviest of Mechs to get out of harms way)

Of course, Mr. Dumb dumb who sits put is just ripe for getting spotted and shelled with artillery, but you have to be mindful of danger-close situations where teammates in the area may take friendly fire from such a powerful ability. Not to mention there needs to be a very decent recharge and initial cost to the Mech to even support the ability.

i agree it shouldnt be able to track individual targets just an area of effect but if you are caught in that AOE it should be devistating or at least disorienting........and a mine field drop pod would just be awsome nothing like droppin a bunch of mines in front or around an enemy lance to slow them down

[Dlardrageth]

I'd rather have the artillery assets sitting off-map, frankly. First, that could save some developing resources spent on something else important. And the only "advantage" of on-site artillery would be that you might be able to blow it up.

Second, even with Arrow IV systems we're not talking about a real artillery strike in the classical sense. Time between realying data to artillery and actual impact of shells/application of damage is still a bit short there. Accuracy rather high. Etc. Entailing the risk of the game becoming "AMO - Artillery Mechs Online". Artillery should be more like "the unit commander's personal shotgun". to bring some nasty surprise to an enemy that thinks he can sit out most of the game in a nicely covered spot. Aka not moving for minutes, even when discovered, aka hardcore "camper girl".

[Dlardrageth]

Aegis Kleais™, on 24 January 2012 - 10:57 AM, said:

That's a very creative proposition. One of the ever-present secondary objectives would be to render the enemy team's off-map artillery pieces inoperable in order to save yourself from having to deal with it. It's ever-present so anyone who is capable of coordinating an attack can do what they can, when they can, to help out the team.

Yeah, there's ample options to disable the off-board artillery as well, if you want to. Let's look at a hypothetical "level design" for this...

There's a rather "rugged" map, hilly/mountaineous terrain with loads of LoS cover. So off-board artillery will be a major asset, even if you have only a limited number of artillery strikes. The overall secondary objective requires you to take out Base A, which makes you very vulnerable to arty strikes on the approach.

So in order to succeed, you'd want to take out the enemy's artillery assets (off-board still), before going for the big push. Giving you a tertiary objective. In order to accomplish it, you'll have to take out three comm relay beacons/trucks/whatever dispersed over the map. (Prolly 3 for each side.) So you'd sent out your faster/lighter units first to tackle that tertiary, while the slower component of your team starts lumbering towards the secondary objective. Once you took out those comm facilities, either enemy arty is disabled or at least severely gimped (aka 2 minutes before firing order is actually processed). Then you can go on about secondary and primary objective.

Don't think that is too complicated a mechanism (worked for me when "designing" a tabletop battle setup) in my example. And surely is easier to develop/implement than in-battle artillery as extra destroyable structures and loads of extra graphics (arty firing, arty moving, arty blowing up, arty reloading and what not). Additional benefit would obviously be to make info warfare even more an important factor and also buff the role of light/medium Mechs.

Edited by Dlardrageth, 24 January 2012 - 12:02 PM.

[MaddMaxx]

And if you did knock out the tertiary and blind the arty call-in, when/if a Commander decided to place a blind strike on the Battlegrid it is done. No cancel. No-recall. That way a Commander could try and "guess" where the enemy is approaching from, or headed, after the last good known sighting, but if they are not longer there, or have turned away since, the strike is wasted.

It would add alot to move around and see a huge bombardment come down just 50 yards away knowing your whole Lance was just standing in the exact center of that mess just a moment ago discussing tactics for the final push.

Edited by MaddMaxx, 24 January 2012 - 11:42 AM.

[Nik Van Rhijn]

Which could end up as linked instances. They said that the "commander" can call in off board artillery and air strikes. This may be a defender advantage as you can't necessarily guarantee such things for an attacker. In fact the more I think about it, the more it makes sense that any "battle" for a planet really should involve a number of different objective based scenario's rather than just a one off instance. Unfortunately this may not be something that they intend for the MVP at launch. I just hope it's something that can be implimented fairly soon after launch (once any major "features" have been sorted).

[Yeach]

I somewhat miss artilery beacons from MW4.
Plant some on the feet of a Daishi and they don't know what hit them.

Tried TAG in multiplayer MW3... but online people tend to move so didn;t so well.

[Valdor Constantine]

The best part about this is it gives you the chance to control the battle field funnel enemy forces into kill zones slow an enemies advance or if your crazy enough bring the rain in close if your area is in danger of being overrun the possibilities are limitless and it's such an easy concept to put in the game

[KJ Crow]

I would like to see something like this built into the functionality of the LRM systems.... we still have the ability to lock on to a target but also have the option to 'lob' missiles indirectly by adjusting the firing range manually.... say your target is hiding behind a hill......your scout has spotted them and uploaded the data to you.... your rangefinder says it is 500m to the side of the hill facing you, you manually adjust this up to say 550m and blind fire, getting a report back from your scout to alter for the next shot...

okay..... over complicating things again I guess

[Sid3track3d]

Naginata, Archer and Vulture are great examples of mech artilary.

[Sid3track3d]

If you have Mech's on artillary support on map give them disadvantages. Less arment slower, cooldown times etc If you really focus on balance I feel it would create more realism than off map artillary calls like COD.

[Nik Van Rhijn]

Tou forgot my favourite - the Longbow. In smaller mechs you have the Whitworth and Trebuchet.

[Ranger207]

I've always wanted to use artillery as an area-denial weapon. If, for example, you're "holding the line" and have one especially weak spot, then the commander could lob a couple of shells over there every once in a while. If you're attacking, would YOU want to run into an area where 20+ damage are shelling all the time? Or an ambush mission on a mountain pass map- one team is going through a narrow pass while the other team flanks them. Keep 'em bottled up and shell 'em to kingdom come! Of course, how would you get out of this situation? Counter-battery artillery? Aerospace fighters to swoop down and take the artillery out while the enemy fighters are covering their forces? Sabotage?

Edited by Ranger207, 26 January 2012 - 06:43 AM.

[Aegis Kleais]

Yeah, it's not that I'm not for a Mech CHOOSING to have Artillery weapons that can work alongside team-beacons to do additional damage. But most are so heavy and space consuming and have such a long cooldown, that it would almost require them to run from all encounters with enemies and rely on spotters to be useful.

It's not that they couldn't dumbfire their artillery, but the travel time on those shots should, IMO, be long enough that "direct fire" options are simply not plausible.