about Airstrikes

[omega79]

I know Airstrikes from games like Enemy Teritory and Quake Wars ...

In Quake Wars, when you called an airstrike you had to throw a smoke granade,

so everybody knew there is an airstrike incomming (never knew from where exactly but a raw idea) ...

then you had an artillary bombardment what actually works like i saw in RenegadeX videos:

you had a binocular and marked a spot with a laser for a while ...

so this laser was clearly visible for the enemy for like 3 or 4 seconds

and your team got a mark of the affected area on the minimap to avoid friendly fire

so far so good ...

but do you get any warning if the enemy placed an airstrike?

i mean, do you see the laser of the enemy?

do you get an audiowarning by eva?

do you get a mark on the map?

will ther be any indication on the battlefield about where it will hit? (like a small plume or tiny blinking light)

and do the superweapons do friendly fire?

i believe they should ... ions, nukes and airstrikes should be fatal to friendlies imo

[ErroR]

I'm interested in that too.

Right now it seems like you can just call in an airstrike to kill a group of unaware enemies.

I like the smoke grenade idea.

Super weapons never caused friendly fire damage in renegade and I don't see why they should here.

Unless of course friendly fire was turned on but then anything would deal damage.

It was a server option that I've never seen be used.

Making super weapons and nothing else deal friendly fire damage would be confusing and would open lots of griefing opportunities.

I think we just need a friendly fire server option.

[omega79]

yes you are probably right ... no friendly fire for nukes and ions ...

but an airstrike, hmmm ... i have mixed feelings, since i did not play RenegadeX yet ...

a mighty weapon like that should not be a to easy decision to call any time and anywhere

[Ban4life]

I have played with friendly fire on. When you see people with a negative 10000 points, you play with friendly fire on. It was just not a good mode as people started to kill their own bases. It just takes one guy and you're screwed.

Doesn't the airstrike have an announcement for both teams? It would give a warning, but not where. It might also not be heard with all the fighting. I sometimes nearly missed the announcement in the movies.

[HaTe]

The EVA warning for the airstrikes has recently been thoroughly discussed between devs and testers. How it works now will likely change for the next beta build, so I can't say anything for sure. I believe the overall consensus was that it should notify the team that calls one in when it is called in, but not the enemy team until about 5 seconds before impact (airstrike incoming type of thing).

Friendly fire is off by default server side. You can damage/kill yourself with one though I believe.

[ehh]

keep in mind you have to be in range and you can only have a ion/nuke or a airstrike not both.

[omega79]

thats sounds good so far ... for about FF for airstrikes only, well guess i have to wait until 26th to see how it feels to say more

is the limit for a certain area or the whole map?

could it be possible to have an airstrike on the battlefield and one on the own base while a teammate planted a beacon on an enemy building?

[ErroR]

could it be possible to have an airstrike on the battlefield and one on the own base while a teammate planted a beacon on an enemy building?

Pretty sure

If you mean at the same time then I don't know. Although a few seconds wouldn't make a big difference anyway.

[omega79]

I just can compare it to quake wars

there you were able to launch multiple bombardments (like airstrikes) but you were limited to one at a time in a certain area

you could login your laser just after the bombardment was finished ... giving a small break between the bombardments and granting that there is no multi bombardment in a small area

in quake wars it did mean: you planted a bomb and someone called the bombardment to cover, BUT the bombardment was to short to cover the whole countdown and a new bombardment started probably to late to cover the bomb again ...

could be the same with a beacon in RenegadeX ...

one airstrike gives few seconds of cover for the beacon but not enough to cover the whole countdown and a new one could only be called after the last one is done ... giving a break and chance to defuse

[ErroR]

Sounds reasonable.

Currently it seems you can just call an airstrike on a beacon and give no chance to the enemy team to disarm it.

[SFJake]

This is confusing, I'm not sure how it is, or how its planned to be, from the looks of this topic.

On a personel level, I find airstrikes very cheap, so I'm having concerns on how they will be balanced.

Airstrikes should not even be allowed to cover a beacon at all. It cheapens the event oh so completely.

I have other concerns with airstrike, such as them not being obvious enough that you can get randomly killed by one as an infantry or some such.

Likewise, I'm absolutely expecting airstrikes to be limited so that you can't just spam multiple airstrikes (this means NO simultaneous airstrike and a good delay between each, no matter who is calling them). Otherwise, I can only imagine the ridiculousness of airstrike spamming on Island on a 64 player server.

[HaTe]

It would take a second teammate to call one in, and it cots $700. Plus the additional 5 second call in time where you become pretty vulnerable to enemies. It also doesn't last that long, and you'd have to time it pretty well.

As far as spamming them goes, I'm sure there will be something put in place. As of right now, the beta is focusing more on glitch prevention than balancing (as it is hard to find balance on an ever changing game with a limited amount of beta testers). That's where the public beta comes in. Your concerns are very valid though, and I can assure you they have been considered. Right now priorities are put in place on other places for the current time though.

[ErroR]

Yeah, pretty sure it will be obvious what needs to be tweaked after a week or so of public beta testing.

I always found the idea of a 64 player server a joke. 15 gunners and any building's done for.

Unless perhaps building health could scale somehow. Either a server option or based on player count.

But that would cause confusion and wouldn't be too practical.

[Noodlesocks]

How it works just now, you buy the airstrike from a PT like you would a nuke/ion. You can't have both at one time. I believe they double in price when power plant is destroyed.

You right click to bring the binoculars up and left click to target. While painting an area, you are completely stationary and there is a visible beam from you to the target. Once fully targeted, both teams get an airstrike announcement (Although this is likely to change). There are a few seconds until the airstrike actually begins.

Airstrike do little damage to buildings, they're more effective against players. They aren't instant kill on higher tier vehicles or infantry so even if you are caught in a strike, you still have a brief time to escape the targeted area. As you can see here from one of my other videos, it took 4 shots from the Nod Airstrike to kill me over 4 seconds along with the medium tank.

From playing I can at least say that they've never really felt spammed or overpowered.

[Valor]

Yeah, pretty sure it will be obvious what needs to be tweaked after a week or so of public beta testing.

I always found the idea of a 64 player server a joke. 15 gunners and any building's done for.

Unless perhaps building health could scale somehow. Either a server option or based on player count.

But that would cause confusion and wouldn't be too practical.

More gunners yes but also more engis on the opposite team. Unless the vehicle limit is increased dramatically, most players in a 32v32 will be in base defending. And it's unlikely a gunner rush can do undetected with so many players.

Building health should not scale with players, you'll have to change your strategies when you're in a large game.

[[NE]Fobby[GEN]]

Airstrikes require you to zoom in, select the targeted area, and plant. The planting takes 5 seconds, and you cannot move while you are planting. A laser indicator is visible to everyone during the planting. After the planting is done, EVA notifies all players that a GDI or Nod Airstrike is on en route. Then, about 5 seconds later, the plane comes in.

So as an airstriker, there's a number of factors you must consider:

1) Before planting, you must make sure that the targeted enemies will remain in that area for the next 10-15 seconds.

2) While planting, you must make sure that you are not exposed to enemy fire, because you must stand still and you can die in the process.

3) While planting, you must make sure that your laser pointer is not in the enemy's view.

Airstrikes cost 700 credits. I believe they are fair. There are times where airstrikes will fail, either because you will die in the process, or because the enemy will move away from the painted area. But, when they an airstrike is directed towards a group of camping tanks that are not paying attention to their surroundings, they can be very affective. Airstrikes are a gamechanger, but it keeps the game fluid, fresh, and it breaks stalemates. They are not overused, because there are risks involving their use. But they can be very affective.

[Daedhart]

Yeah, the only scenario I can picture them being helpful in is when 10 tanks are all camping the base entrance 3 stooges style.

[Valor]

It was used to great advantage in Field in the latest Q&A livestream. Nuke the ref plus an airstrike and GDI didn't stand a chance.

Too early to tell if it's overpowered, but it does help one to ion/nuke successfully.

[[NE]Fobby[GEN]]

You'll just have to wait and see. We've been testing airstrikes for months, we're not throwing a wrench into C&C mode.

[Noodlesocks]

It was used to great advantage in Field in the latest Q&A livestream. Nuke the ref plus an airstrike and GDI didn't stand a chance.

Too early to tell if it's overpowered, but it does help one to ion/nuke successfully.

Hah, yea that was fun. It did cost 1700 creds plus the money it cost us to select those classes though. It also required a bit of teamwork and opportunity to set that up. We had fairly good control of the tunnels for a good portion of that game which you saw a little bit of in the Q&A.

Field does have those little nooks you can sneak in to fairly easy but trying that on a map like islands or whiteout where they will see 2+ people coming from a mile away is a lot harder to accomplish. Sure enough, if it does prove to be a balance issue it will likely be addressed. I'm just saying it's a pretty situational item and the beacon/airstrike thing does require teamwork and opportunity =)

EDIT: Oh! and I should point out that we put down two nuke beacons and one of them was disarmed before the airstrike arrived =P

[omega79]

Okay that sounds good Fobby

just one more question ...

if someone walks/drives through the laser while planting, does it reset the process of planting cuz the laser lost its target?

in quake wars this was a good way to disturb or delay a bombardment in some cases

[ErroR]

Yeah, pretty sure it will be obvious what needs to be tweaked after a week or so of public beta testing.

I always found the idea of a 64 player server a joke. 15 gunners and any building's done for.

Unless perhaps building health could scale somehow. Either a server option or based on player count.

But that would cause confusion and wouldn't be too practical.

More gunners yes but also more engis on the opposite team. Unless the vehicle limit is increased dramatically, most players in a 32v32 will be in base defending. And it's unlikely a gunner rush can do undetected with so many players.

Building health should not scale with players, you'll have to change your strategies when you're in a large game.

That's true but unless detected (which does seem like a really big possibility) the attackers would have an advantage before the enemy team mobilizes engineers.

Either way, let's just see what happens.

I personally plan on sticking to lower player count servers for the start.