Artillery is easily one of the most OP things in the game. It cannot be countered really at all. There is inevitably always two artillery squads sitting out in the back of the map raining shells and sniping the entire game. While it would be nice if the engineers were able to make a cover for trenches, it doesn’t seem like that is likely to happen.
So, I would like to suggest adding various artillery locations that can be hit with planes, this will stop the enemies’ ability to use artillery for a period of time, until one of the other locations becomes active. This solves a couple issues in one go. It stops artillery from being absolutely spammed, gives other targets for planes so they aren’t continuously bombing infantry, and it gives more use to mortar squads. (Mortar squads are currently VERY overshadowed by Artillery squads. So much so that I rarely ever see them used.)
To help planes locate the artillery locations, a small HUD element should be displayed every time that enemy artillery is used. Visually, the muzzle flash should be visible from the sky. If they wanted to add another level of detail to this mechanic, have numerous artillery guns per location. If they aren’t all destroyed in a zone, they will continue to operate, but fire less shells per volley. Slowly they rebuild over time, and can become fully functional again. If the whole site is destroyed, it will take a few minutes for it to activate another site.
Yet I see most artillery strikes take out 5-25 people/ hit. Every 30 sec. It really doesn’t matter that there is an indication that its coming in, when there isn’t enough cover to make use of, and a lot of the terrain takes longer that 30 sec to traverse.
Yes, both sides can spam it, but this would give a way for both sides to COUNTER it as well.
I’d also like to note that there have been tons of games where i am the only person on my team pushing objective, even though i have 7 other human teammates. Majority of them sitting back with artillery squads and a sniper, all fighting over artillery and afraid of losing their squad so they don’t push forward. That is a tell-tale sign that the class is OP beyond belief. When everyone is using it, and are afraid to lose it because its such a high source of kills.
I can’t agree that artillery is op, I really think it’s been balanced pretty well. It can get tiring when it’s being used non-stop for an entire match, and it’s one of the only abilities that has no counter.
That’s why I’m in favor of the idea of bombing artillery locations: to give an ability to counter constant artillery barrages; and to expand the air battle by giving a realistic air mission to pilots that can have a direct affect on the fighting on the ground.
I think it’s an excellent way to tie together the different arms of the combined arms battles in enlisted.
I also think artillery spotters should have to actually spend the first part of a barrage on the radio with a line of sight to the target until the spotting is done. Then get rid of the red circle until the barrage arrives
Yes, lets bring “skill” into it. Artillery squad can be used from any range, to target anywhere within the accessible map, every 30 sec with no limitation as far as ammo is concerned. Also, the only indication there is a radioman is the radio on his back. It can be used on the move, no need to hole up somewhere for more than 5 sec at a time. Also, you can put a standard radioman into every squad.
Compared to Mortarman- Limited range of around 230m, requires either teammate spotting or direct line of site to the enemy to use, has to stop to aim and shoot, is VERY limited on ammo, even with engineers in the squad, is very audible when using the mortar, can see the flash from mortars being fired, and are only available on ONE squad.
You must be playing an ENTIRELY different game. Radiomen squads dominate every single game i play. There is always at least 1-3 active radio squads the entire game.
As far as “use your eyes, you can avoid” part, that’s not even a feasible thing for several reasons.
If I’m pushing an objective, my attention is on combatting those in front of me, not watching my map the whole time.
You only get a few seconds of warning, its usually not enough to get away from it.
The only ones its really possible to avoid are the bomber strikes as it gives you like 90 sec and multiple bubbles on the map, and they have a couple minutes of cooldown.
When they are constantly bombing the only realistic entrance to an objective, how is one supposed to “avoid it”? By not going in and therefore losing?
How about on areas that have NO COVER from it in the objective? Constantly bombing the objective makes it literally impossible to take in those instances.
There have been many times that i’ve been killed by it when I was OUTSIDE of its area that is marked, but i still got hit because there was not cover between me and the blast.
Sandbags are vaporized every time it hits, so trying to put up cover to be able to move is pointless.
It can hit INSIDE trenches. So even taking the time to dig trenches to move across open ground isn’t an issue.
As an RO, You need some knowledge of the map layout/intuition/guesswork and perhaps a bit of math - so that you can fairly accuratelly guess where the enemy will be in 10, 15, 20 and 25 seconds.
You cannot target grayzone.
No, dedicated RO squads, that are fully upgraded can call it every 60 seconds - it takes roughly about 30 seconds for shells to arrive, and the rest of 30 seconds is the cooldown.
For a non-dedicated RO squad, it’s usefulness is severelly limited, it is better to put an engineer in his place, as his artillery strike calling times default to unupgraded RO - somewhere around 3 minutes.
254 meters on the german granatwerfer 36.
False, you do not need direct line of sight - you only need to have a rough guess of how quickly your mortar shell will arrive and approximate location of where the enemy is likelly going to be.
I don’t remember flashes when using mortars.
I was about to answer, though, I think You could’ve quoted me from other thread.
Radiomen don’t dominate. Maybe some newcomers might luck out once or twice, when the cap zone is in the open, true.
But then the next cap is in a building, and the same player becomes a huge liability:
will keep calling arty on the building, wasting arty time
will shell-shock his own team, making advance HARDER
will NOT push himself, preferring to stay in the back… thus not helping plus being an handicap because of the first 2 points.
never use smoke barrage to help his team succeed, trying to farm kills (and lamentably failling when caps are indoors)
Seriously arty is fine now. It has been nerfed tremendously compared to when the game first released (THANKFULLY). Back then, all 10 players of one team could call arty SIMULTANEOUSLY!!! And stacks playing togheter timed their arty strikes to make the shell rain PERMANENT.