No. The WP system is good for now because it balances it out. A cool down timer is bad, who would have control over it? The squad leader? What if there are multiple squads with leaders? Can anyone do it? How long it the cool down timer? Could I simply bomb the spawn point of the enemy the second the match starts?

Too many balance issues, not enough reasonable answers.


No,

"and furthermore it rewards the winning team with more firepower"

1. orbitals are only for squads trying to help their team win the game
2. the losing team can call in orbitals too

No. The WP system is good for now because it balances it out. A cool down timer is bad, who would have control over it? The squad leader? What if there are multiple squads with leaders? Can anyone do it? How long it the cool down timer? Could I simply bomb the spawn point of the enemy the second the match starts?

Too many balance issues, not enough reasonable answers.


No,

I completely agree. It is immersion breaking when you have a CoD like reward system.

A cool down timer would be perfect IMO but maybe have it a little bit more steps (mechanics to call it in).

If we had an infinite amount of orbital strikes (with cool down) we should have some drawback. I'm thinking it would be a bigger delay from request to impact by a few seconds (you could say they are processing the coordinates and moving into the precise position for the turrets.)

P.S. A long cooldown time would allow for more tactical use of strikes (or a complete waste) but something like this would call for a battle commander right?

Soldier: We have fifty hositiles on our location, we need orbital support!
Warbarge: Did you earn enough arbitrary battle points for doing random things on the field?
S: ...WHAT?
W: We aren't just giving these away, you have to earn them.
S: But that bombardment will secure our victory. You HIRED us to defend this facility for you!
W: And how is that my problem?

This idea has some merit.

OBs should actually depend more on what is happening in orbit. If my employer is in control upstairs then I should be able to get steel rain when I need it.

Can you imagine the naval support bombardment during the WWll invasion of Europe depending on the allies winning on the ground? It might have turned out quite differently. Control of the sea was more important for providing bombardments.

A cooldown timer based on my employer reloading his guns and getting into position is reasonable. The number of OBs would reasonably be limited by how many ships were in orbit, the type of ships (maybe OB ships are special and expensive? Maybe they are one-time shot devices that are expensive, big and have to be towed into orbit?), how many were damaged or killed and what the level of commitment to victory my employer was. This would also require a degree of skill and integration with the ground forces. A cooldown timer is a good idea.

Maybe he size and damage of an OB would depend on how big the guns were? A massive battleship might have a bigger OB than a smaller ship. This might be a way for smaller corps to provide some support to the mercenary forces they hire because the bigger corps are more likely to hire the best (and most expensive) merc corps.

For FW and PC I think this is an excellent idea.

For pub matches, we obviously have to have the OBs controlled by the ground forces. A cooldown timer for these is still a good idea. I even like the idea of, say, one or two free OBs at the start of the game just to keep things interesting. It would help control zergs for sure. It would limit walkovers where one team gets redlined and everyone magically turns into a redline sniper.

My 0.02 ISK,


Munch

A BS OB would destroy the entire map size we have now.

Free OB are a bad idea unless its by an EVE player

OB on WP are just as bad because its easy to grind pts

CoD Style OBs was a terrible idea, its a 'rich get richer' mechanic that gives more power to the players on the battlefield who dont need it. In addition, its completely holding back any chance of people getting WPs for things they should be getting WPs for. We will never get a true WP system that rewards people for their actions until we remove the desire to exploit said system for more OBs.

MAG had a truly wonderful system imo.

Air strikes had some like a 30s cooldown between them with a 2m cooldown per squad leader. In this way, you had some time between strikes, so they weren't spammable but each SL had an opportunity to use their strikes in between the other SLs using theirs. This system would not work in Dust though, as you can make/break your own squads, but there is an easier way to do it.

I proposed a while back a system I thought would work very well in Dust, that is continuously accruing 'OMS Points'.

Your squad gets 1 OMS Point per second, per squad member (not counting squad leader). So you can get up to 5 OMSP/s.

Then you decide the CD you want for OBs... say X minutes? and you make it 60*5*X OMS points per strike. This rewards people getting into squads to get more strikes, and gives both sides equal opportunity for OBs. The SL can then get a little indicator on his HUD which counts up OMS points so he can plan how soon his OB will be ready. We can also make different types of OMS available down the road for different OMSP prices.

Say... SD for 200 OMSP? Or a CRU for 300?

Orbital Scan or Jamming at 400 and 500?

Anyways... WP for OBs is holding back this game... a lot. Removing the mechanic will have to be the first step in their revamp of the WP system down the road.

An XL sized shell is the size of one of those hauling trucks, trailer and all. Not quite enough to annihalate the entire map, but it would be significantly larger than the current ones.

I agree the current method of OBs is stupid and immersion breaking. In an effort to bring back the immersion while not breaking the gameplay, imagine this:

We are fighting on a bunch of planets that ultimately we aren't very familiar with (considering the vast amount we fight on). We cannot simply tell a Capsuleer to call down a strike because (s)he would have no clue where to call it and even the slight miscalculation could be devastating. So as ground troops we must secure a satellite station on the ground to send signals containing the coordinates to the Capsuleers. Once capturing this satellite station it links up with your suit electronics so you can access it via your wrist-thing. The satellite would also have a bad signal because of the warfare so you could only send a transmission up to space once every so many minutes.

All they'd then have to do is find a place to put such an objective within all the current maps, or what they could do that would be even easier is simply make one of the null cannons the satellite station controls as well, giving it dual importance (games like Battlefield do this already giving some bases control of an Air Raid like in BF1943 or an AI dropship like in BF3).

I made a thread like this builds ago, but it never got anywhere. Noone listens to the guy with 39 likes in the Feedback section.

Orbitals are currently earned by WP. This means that the WP system is constantly being gamed to get the maximum WP for the maximum explosive heaven strikes. We have already seen causualties of this with the Lagistics losing their rep points to vehicles, Installations, and even to other PLAYERS after about a solid 15 seconds of healing. Furthermore, I want you to imagine the situation....

Soldier: We have fifty hositiles on our location, we need orbital support!
Warbarge: Did you earn enough arbitrary battle points for doing random things on the field?
S: ...WHAT?
W: We aren't just giving these away, you have to earn them.
S: But that bombardment will secure our victory. You HIRED us to defend this facility for you!
W: And how is that my problem?

In short, getting Bombardments through WP is idiotic, immersion breaking, and furthermore it rewards the winning team with more firepower.

We need to take a look at how Orbitals are earned. If an EVE player uses their guns, which the Orbital bombarders are in case you DUSTies didn't know, they have a cooldown period. Even if more ammo is loaded, each shot has a decent amount of time in between being fired, and then there is a reload period once all the shots in the chamber are gone. Therefore, I think it would make more sense if the Orbitals were on a cooldown timer, and if overused would have a longer timer as the cannon 'reloads'. Those of you who come from MAG, remember the Mortars and Airstrikes? Kinda like that.

Let this not be the only alternative though, brainstorm here people! We need to think of a better Orbital mechanic than bloody BULLETSTORM!


EXAMPLE
Start the battle with no Orbital Support as the ships are getting into position. At the 7 minute mark or so, AURA notifies you that Orbital Support is in position. From this point onward, each squad can call in Orbitals. If Squad A calls in an orbital, then they cannot call in another for, say, 10 minutes. The rest of the squads have to wait for the Orbital Cannon to reload, lets say that takes 3 minutes. In this manner, we will have the three full squads that we can have rotating strikes throughout a match and there won't be any exploits like, say, every guy is his own squad for 16 orbitals. You may want to bump the timers up, make there be more space between Orbitals, but this is just a jumping point to get started.

EXAMPLE 2: Credit to Kirk
Start the battle with no Orbital Support, as with Example 1. When the ships get into position, a Team Leader, above the Squad Leaders, determines when and where the strikes will land. Squad Leaders still have the power of Squad Orders for maximizing WP and squad coordination. Team Leaders could have a TEAM WIDE version of this, if DEVs decide to add this feature. Cooldown for strikes is 5-7 or so minutes, allowing a few game changing strikes, but not making the battlefield a crater.

If there is a commander mode I would love to see the Commander manage strikes, turrent and CRU assets, and scanning assets.

Basically a Commander spends his time looking at the massive tactical map scanning the map for enemies both infy and tanks and lighting them up, answering OB requests, and deploying turret assets to useful areas, perhaps even using anti infantry and tank MCC turrets to aid in the destruction of enemy forces.

They were removed because they were being used for farming. Once some of our new anti-farming stuff comes online and we've had a chance to see how the vehicle gameplay is developing we'll consider bringing them back.

A Ragnarok's six quad 3500mm slugs would have some serious kinetic happyjoyjoy when they hit the ground. That's 24 shells the size of cars slamming down from thousands of kilometres away. Then the nuclear payloads explode.