Part of me would like friendly fire enabled specifically for orbitals. It makes for rather lame tactics, where you just drop an orbital on your own head, and *boom* rush to objective as its falling. Lame.

I'd also say that orbitals should never reward you. Ever. Because the orbital IS THE REWARD. Rich get richer mechanics are lame. And a reward rewarding you with more rewards is exactly that: Lame.

Anyway, orbitals are terribly lame. A rework to make these lame things not-lame would be a welcome alteration to this game.

I'm just going to paste these posts that I made from a while back:




-HAND

Honestly WB strikes shouldn't net the squad anything. The squad leader shouldn't even get kills off of it, let alone points. All it is is pushing a button on a map. The point of the WB is to help your team, not farm kills.

Outright doubling it will just screw over smaller squads, those containing new or less hardcore players and those containing players who perform roles that don't necessarily earn tons of WP, while making no real difference to stacked proto, vehicle and farming squads.

Could make it so that each successive orbital requires x amount or % more WP to achieve, making their usage more tactical, as it would become progressively more difficult to get the next one. 2500 for the first, but 3500 for the second, 5000 for the third, 7000 fourth and so on. Prorating the WP requirement based on squad size could work, too, but not necessarily on its own.

1st: It should use a step-stool method where the amount of WP doubles each time (if that is too much, just adds an extra 2500 each time)

1st OB: 2500 WP
2nd OB: 5000 WP
3rd OB 10000 WP

or:

1st OB 2500 WP
2nd OB 5000 WP
3rd OB 7500 WP
4th OB 10000 WP


Orbitals should not be something a squad of six should be able to drop 6 or 7 times just to farm kills and boost WP. Once you hit the 3rd OB, it is capped and a squad can not drop any more for the duration of the match. That makes them more tactical. Getting that 3rd orbital at the end of a Dom or Skirm match to take over one of the cannons would be huge.

2nd: should damage everyone including friendlies, then give a -WP penalty for any squad members killed. This would mean the person dropping it needs to actually be cognizant of his surroundings. It will kill all the blueberries (But not give any negative SP) and everyone dies including your own people. This will prevent the all too common "Drop an orbital on "A" as the entire squad rushes through the door to take over objective."

3rd: What if instead of giving all WP to the Squad leader, it is divvied up equally among the squad members. I know when I run squad lead and get 150-500 WP from it, I wish I could give 100 to each member. That way the people who are contributing and helping the squad leader get those OB's get rewarded for them as well. They helped earn it. They should reap some of the rewards.