A Corp that's trying to do PC with no EVE players should suffer for that.

Most Corps are forming alliances that also have EVE Corps, which was part of the intention of this game all along: to have us both cooperate.

If this has to wait until those orbital cannons can be finished, then fine, but NPC strikes just eliminate any interest in working with EVE players for orbitals. Even though our strikes do more damage, people will still gravitate toward the "easy" and "safe" option, even when it makes no sense to do so.

Re-read my post.

Precision Strikes don't have advantages under my proposed system. The only arguable advantage is the result of the "smaller blast radius" disadvantage - they have less collateral damage and can be used with less risk of friendly fire in mid-range combat. Also, if there's a cooldown on the use of the Precision Strikes, then EVE Orbitals will be able to "fill in" when a Precision Strike is still on cooldown, meaning EVE players can provide more consistent fire support.

The devs have directly stated that they DON'T WANT TO FORCE players to rely on the EVE/DUST link. I agree that it should be encouraged, and should give an advantage when it's used, but I disagree that going without should totally gimp your Corp in one of the primary aspects of being a Corp.

EDIT: Also worth mentioning, I think there needs to be a delay between calling for a Precision Strike and the Warbarge actually firing. That would negate the one area where people can legitimately argue that there's an advantage to Precision Strikes.

Oh yea, also I would like to look at giving the EVE player in FW LP for dropping orbitals... need to look into it though and make sure it cannot be exploited or anything stupid like that. :)

Hey guys,

It is no secret that one of the things we would like to do is fiddle with the orbital strikes design. This includes a few small things like normalizing how we name everything (precision strike, orbital strike, orbital bombardment, other random names), making sure players know when they have an orbital strike available by always displaying something on the HUD instead of having the message show up and then disappear which often gets missed (I had 3 OBs the other night and had no idea... I am a bad squad leader...).

One of the other things we would like to do is make it so that NPC provided orbital strikes, the precision strike from the war barge, is only available in what is currently known as instant battles. That would mean that in in Factional Warfare and Planetary Conquest battles the only orbital support would be from EVE players. This is a pretty straight forward change but there is more we want to do.

We would like to also make it so that EVE orbitals are NOT earned via war points. Orbitals in instant battles would still be earned via WP... unless we come up with something else but at this time we are currently not thinking of touching it. For EVE orbitals though we are looking at making it so that the EVE pilot earns the orbital strike by capturing a beacon above the district. This would work very much the same way Factional Warfare complex beacons work. Also very similar to how it worked for the Fanfest tournament.

The three things I am most interested in hearing about are:

What do you think about removing war barge strikes from FW and PC?
What do you think about EVE players earning the orbital strike?
What do you think about who should earn calling in the orbital strike?


That of course does not mean don't discuss other things relating to orbital strikes, but I would prefer to keep that discussion focused around those 3 points.

So please, let us know what you think.

I almost think the EVE player should decide which squad leader to give it to. Let them decide over comms. The in game voice comms work fine, and so does third party software many of us use already.
That said this is less important, and can be done many different ways.

DISCLAIMER: This is a discussion about stuff that has not happened yet and is not planned to happen for at least a few months at the earliest. There was a discussion on IRC about it yesterday and I wanted to keep the discussion going. Nothing in here is finalized yet, work has not even begun on it yet. /disclaimer

Hey guys,

It is no secret that one of the things we would like to do is fiddle with the orbital strikes design. This includes a few small things like normalizing how we name everything (precision strike, orbital strike, orbital bombardment, other random names), making sure players know when they have an orbital strike available by always displaying something on the HUD instead of having the message show up and then disappear which often gets missed (I had 3 OBs the other night and had no idea... I am a bad squad leader...).

One of the other things we would like to do is make it so that NPC provided orbital strikes, the precision strike from the war barge, is only available in what is currently known as instant battles. That would mean that in in Factional Warfare and Planetary Conquest battles the only orbital support would be from EVE players. This is a pretty straight forward change but there is more we want to do.

We would like to also make it so that EVE orbitals are NOT earned via war points. Orbitals in instant battles would still be earned via WP... unless we come up with something else but at this time we are currently not thinking of touching it. For EVE orbitals though we are looking at making it so that the EVE pilot earns the orbital strike by capturing a beacon above the district. This would work very much the same way Factional Warfare complex beacons work. Also very similar to how it worked for the Fanfest tournament.

This idea however introduces a problem. Currently because it is squads that earn orbital strikes the squad leader gets to call it in. That is very well defined. If the EVE player earns the orbital strike who gets to call the strike in? There are several options to this.

• Any squad leader fighting for the same faction as the EVE pilot gets to call it in. This however leads to all the squad leaders rushing as quickly as possible to call it in as the EVE player is probably going to fire on the first target to appear. This means that often times they may be wasted and experienced players will probably rage... a lot.
• The squad leader of the squad with the most war points gets access to the orbital strike. They are the ones with the most WP and so probably the most deserving of it... but that will probably snowball in a match and no one else would ever get it.

In a Planetary Conquest match we could open it up to all squad leaders and say "hey, your match control your people" and that would be the end of it. However in a Factional Warfare match you don't control who gets in and who doesn't so it's not fair to say that and we would like to have the same system for handling this with both types of battle.

We are currently favouring the idea of giving it to the squad with the most war points, but as said above nothing is final at this point.

The three things I am most interested in hearing about are:

1. What do you think about removing war barge strikes from FW and PC?
2. What do you think about EVE players earning the orbital strike?
3. What do you think about who should earn calling in the orbital strike?

That of course does not mean don't discuss other things relating to orbital strikes, but I would prefer to keep that discussion focused around those 3 points.

So please, let us know what you think.

Just gonna repeat myself from here... but....

Personally, as an Eve player, it is BS that we cannot fire unless the ground team accumulates so many war points. We are not part of the game, but rather we just facilitate "Call of Duty" style rewards for killing a large number of people. If you want me to give a darn about providing support it needs to work more along the lines of when I arrive at the planet I contact the peole in dust and they paint a target/give me a code. I fire immediatly, regardless of their WP total. I am there to turn the tide of battle, not to keep the winning team in the high seats.

Just gonna repeat myself from here... but....

Personally, as an Eve player, it is BS that we cannot fire unless the ground team accumulates so many war points. We are not part of the game, but rather we just facilitate "Call of Duty" style rewards for killing a large number of people. If you want me to give a darn about providing support it needs to work more along the lines of when I arrive at the planet I contact the peole in dust and they paint a target/give me a code. I fire immediatly, regardless of their WP total. I am there to turn the tide of battle, not to keep the winning team in the high seats. Let me shoot when I arrive so I feel like I am actually doing something! You could add a cooldown or a sensor reclairation time or some kind of other B.S., excuse to prevent me from shooting constantly. Even a "Lock on Time" of a couple minutes might be intersting, because it would make me vulnerable to attacks rom other ships . But either way I should be able to fire at my enemies so long as they do not have emplacements or allies in space to stop me! Doing it based on War Points is unfair to the players of Eve!

NO, THIS WILL NOT CAUSE OB SPAMMING:
Factors Already in play that would limit OB spamming:
1. When you show up to OB your location gets broadcasted on the overview to everyone in system, i.e. you become a target.
2. Eve ships are MUCH HARDER TO GET than Dust Dropsuits.
3. Only Small class guns can fit OB ammunition, meaning you have little protection unless non OBing ships are guarding you, meaning a fleet will not normally consist 100% of bombers.

My changes:
1. Activating OB weapons would take 10/20/30 seconds to "Acquire a firing solution" based on ammo, and therefore based on radius of blast. With the smaller blast radius (laser OB) taking less time to still allow some level of accuracy while the larger blast (projectile OB) taking a full 30 seconds and hybrid landing in the middle.
2. During this time you would not be able to move--or if you could it would be just barely. Not being able to shoot is a given, as your guns are shooting groundside. All together this means you are a sitting duck.
3. Ground troops would throw a piece of equipment similar to a drop uplink, but with a low scan profile, meaning it would only be visible if you were practically right on top of it. This equipment would be 1 time use per fit, with no reloads (just like drop uplinks are a 2 use with no reloads). Needing to physically be at OB location prevents spamming and gives scouts a greater level of importance. Alternately they mighty have a painting laser they need to hit a target with for a few seconds before a firing solution can begin to be calculated, or maybe they must paint it the entire time (in which case for balancing purposes the laser would need to be long range or OBs would disappear completely as nobody is going to stand point blank with a hostile tank for 30 seconds. And the long range variant would improve the role of snipers). Possibly a special kind of ammunition you can fire that acts as a homing beacon? Regardless it would require ground troops to specifically FIT for OB support, limiting greatly who can call one in and limiting his equipment for the ability to do so.
4. Friendly fire would be enabled for the OBs, lessening chance of spamming.
5. Only 3 or so OBs could take place every 5 minutes, any further OB attempts would be met with an error message saying something along the lines of "due to debris from recent strikes you are unable to calculate an accurate firing solution at this time."

Allow both teams to fire OBs at same time instead of beacon capturing. that way ship that are OBing become primary targets, and people have to choose between OBing with OB ammo or shooting the gys in the space conflict with normal ammo.

What do you think about removing war barge strikes from FW and PC?

What do you think about EVE players earning the orbital strike?

What do you think about who should earn calling in the orbital strike?

I agree and posted something similar here:

https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=1156018#post1156018

Things I would change.

1. Make the OB ships in EVE require bigger guns with the current OB system we're used to requiring Battleship sized weapons.

2. Give OB guns a LONG cooldown. 2-3 minutes for small, 3-4 for medium and 4-5 minutes for large guns.

3. Allow the EVE player to see a screen similar (or exactly) like our DUST Overlay Map. When the EVE pilot wants to fire (and his guns are not on cooldown and he's locked onto the district) he clicks a location on the Overlay and boom. Death happens. FF is always on.


If nothing else please lose the stupid "killstreak" mechanic. I think it's silly for a game set in New Eden. Nothing is free so either have us pay ISK for orbitals (THAT will get pilots there) and make WP's apply towards ending payouts or let the EVE pilot shoot where they want to shoot.

As others have said the current "killstreak" mechanic only rewards the team that's winning and makes squads shy away from strategy and focus on farming WPs so they can get the next OB. This is New Eden. I may be one guy against a squad of the best players in the galaxy. But if I have a thick wallet I should be able to convince the pilot in orbit to shoot my enemies instead of me... for a price.

1. Not just FW or PC but IB as well. Often there are players floating around in HS that are playing mind the mining frigate and bored to tears. Maybe this could bring a beginner aspect to the OB game.

2. Let them scorch the ground just because they are there with no beacons needed and no time requirement for orbiting a beacon, this is silly.

3. Let all squad leaders call them or allow us to appoint a general, or leader for all the teams, maybe the pilot of the warbage, hint hint.

Orbiting a beacon should cause fights to spawn there so people in space don't have to do 13+ jumps to some randomly selected district.

Let us fight over a particular system. imagine the fights over those beacons in space - with the invaders jockeying for position to try to spawn more fights so the mercs on the ground can cap districts and help make the system vulnerable.

the more i think about the orbital strike system the more confused i get.

if we were to make it completely time based then it sets the possibility of every1 getting obs at the same time.

if its still wp based the squads that do the best get the most obs.


but if we can get the ability to eve players and dust players to talk to each other in game we could add some more tactics and such..

still its all confusing...

i think if we got control of an orbital strike cannon and could fire where we want all around the map for a certain amount of time it would wreak havoc on the battle on the ground...


but it think the only best way to find which could be the best system is to try all of them and see which one works best for every1.

just test them all instead of thinking it all through.

seeing how its going to have flaws on every1 we should just try each one of these systems.

i just dont see a way to perfect the orbital strike system currently.

since if we look at how they r used in game, they r used to clear out mass amounts of clustered up enemies. used to try to kill tanks even though it fails most of the time.

wasted on random parts of the map, used for clearing out av and sniper nests, or not called in at all.


the tac net should be used for calling in obs while in safety as in back away from the fire fight..


if we could use some sort of laser designator thing to light up areas to bring down orbitals it could make it easier to call them down while in a heavy firefight on the ground.


i think we should set up a different test server for any of these ob changes and see how it works and choose the best one to implement.

Bad idea. No modern military in the world would agree with this tactical option as it ruins flexibility on the battlefield for the ground commander. Any organized group would also have a problem with this and it will only get worse once larger groups are allowed to play. Any squad leader (and above when those leader positions actually get a mechanic) should be able to call in the OB based on when the Orbital becomes available. Organized groups already have this covered well tactically in game, and more skilled groups have a decentralized command and control of this. If the "highest WP" group mechanic goes live it will create a mechanic which does not reward team work beyond the squad level, or allow the ground leaders the tactical flexibility for providing mutual support to a squad under duress or press an attack.