Removing the red glare of death. (No laser designator marker)

[Dirty Old Harry]

Summary (a quick, 2-3 sentence summary): Remove the red glare when a SL calls for a fire mission or simply have it only show for certain huds.

Benefits (How this will benefit the server and game as a whole): Stops fire missions being useless since aliens will see the red glare and meta the fuck away from it.

Details (Description of how you think this would work, the benefits, etc): Have the large red laser beam trashed and instead have a smaller red laser constantly emit from the SL calling in the fire mission, the laser would start at the SL's sprite and would finish at the spot designated for a fire mission which doesn't completely hide the laser but doesn't give away as much that there's a big bird about to drop it's payload. Also leave's the SL open and paints a target on his back since they won't be able to move and a smart/quick alien could attempt to stop them if they follow the laser.

Implementation (Optional, if you have an idea how to implement it): Snype, i'm ready. Shoot me down babe.

[Jroinc1]

How would you sprite this?

[Chuckachu]

I plus one the smaller dot maybe half size. Sadly my biggest complaint is I almost always get down to one or two runs left of ammo near the end of the OP. But thats worth it since the last two times I did run out we won. haha

+1

[MrMafioso]

How would you sprite this?

The same way you sprite the red glare of death.

[Dirty Old Harry]

On other bay servers, there's a thing called a "Medigun" which acts just like the TF2 Medic's medbeam gun. The user clicks someone and an animated sprite appears that reaches from the user to the recipient. Just have it work like that.

[caleeb101]

I already suggested that it should be smaller and that was added in. While firing missions are a bit useless right now other than providing cover fire and other small non-lethal stuff I don't think this is the way to attack it. Maybe make the weapons fire faster? Like right after the laser is pointed.

[Chuckachu]

Problem is that when I'm sititng waiting to run a fire mission and you say laser down! I have to launch which takes up to 15-30 seconds depending on lag. Thats plenty of time to have the xenos dodge out of the way. If I'm told launch I"m about to put down a laser then I will and then you las I still see the beacon. WHile in flight any new beacons I can tag as long as I'm 'flying' and have ammo.

[Daman453]

+1 jeeze do we need this. I've seen at first contact the first firemission xenos running away. We need this

[Casgair]

My main issue with no visual cue is it's going to be impossible to play as boiler like that.

[WinterClould]

I've actually grown to love the Red Dot of DOOM. I don't even have to ask the PO to do a fire mission for it to be useful. All I have to do is laze boilers and watch as they run away from nothing. Its crazy useful for just delaying the xenos for lulz and maybe having the rare chance that a PO will just happen to be in the air dropping hot sticky loads of napalm on the xeno. Happened on Big Red I think two days ago, I was just lazing the boilers for funzies, and suddenly righteous hell fire rained from the heavens followed by a some rattler action. Got at least one boiler I could see, maybe a T2 something but it was hard to get a good look. A surprise for sure, but a welcome one.

The red dot was probably most useful when on LV while trying to defend the river. Lazing boilers and the Queen whenever I could see them, really slowed down the rate that the boilers could spit that super for fire at us and the amount of times the queen could get a free ride into our lines to yell abusive language at us at a very high pitch.

-1 Make the Red Dot of DOOM even bigger so the xenos are even more afraid.

[dylanstrategie]

The red dot was added as a compromise between the behavior of real life artillery target painting (no warning, can be done from a distance with modern gear) and the old artillery beacon solution still used for OBs (obvious as hell, need to run up to the target). The main issue is to not make fire missions too overwhelming for Xenos. If they had no warnings of an incoming strike, this could cause a total wipe, which would probably be infuriating for the players on the receiving end

We could reach other solutions, like shifting the artillery warning from the targeting phase to the strike phase, but right now I think we're going to keep what we have

Again, the main issue is that the Xenos MUST be able to counter those strikes. If the Marines can get easy kills on multiple Xenos with no counter, its obvious the Xeno side is going to get shafted hard. Giving a warning that a strike is possible in this general area is our current system, but if we change it, we will very probably NOT make it a no-warning strike. It would be devastating in a non-WO gamemode where every Hive loss puts the Xenos closer to defeat, and where the Xenos are often in predictable positions

[Fritigern]

Airstrikes are just the new OB; big, loud and useless. It's a placebo to give bored pilots a sense of contribution outside of acting as ferrymen.

A few changes I can think of off the top of my head that might alleviate things--they don't all have to be implemented but one or two could make the difference.

Firstly, how about we massively buff the damage of the strikes? You'll only ever hit 1 alien in every 10 strikes, and it's pretty insulting to watch them escape when it happens. As it stands even direct hits often serve to do little more than briefly stun T3 aliens before they scurry off.

Allow the pilots to set a direction their strafing run will follow, North South East or West. This way squad leaders can call for a direction he wants the bullets/rockets to travel during the run, giving them the ability to surprise the aliens by having the strike come from different directions depending on where the laser landed. The single shot missiles could still hit dead center as it works now, or maybe at a slight offset.

Speaking of the laser, how about we ditch the laser mechanic itself? Instead of forcing a SL to stand completely motionless in a war zone for 30 seconds, how about we flavour it up to calling in a set of coordinates to the pilot, a marker that doesn't move even after the squad leader changes positions. Sure the aliens will all see the dot, but it will be used more as area denial rather than immediate fire support. And you still have to have the pilot in the air with his guns loaded to shoot anyways so it's not like aliens won't be able to play around the gaps in the timing.

Or how about we increase the utility of each weapon type used in the strike so they have a greater purpose beyond different types of explosions being rattled off. Cannons should have a much wider area of affect, dealing moderate damage to aliens and really just serving as a way to clear the zone. Napalm should burn EVERYTHING in the zone and clear out all weeds/resin, as well as doing meaningful fire damage to targets in the area. How about a flare round that illuminates a wide are of the battlefield for a limited time? You get the drift, insert utility as needed.

Or how about this? Don't block the radio on the shuttle when they're performing sorties. They're above the planet, put them on the planet net so they can actually directly communicate with the people they're trying to help.

[WinterClould]

Maybe, and this is an idea I dont know if its possible, make it so if you have a pair of tactical bino on your person you get a message like the overwatch messages that a DS on a fire mission is in the air.

With this you can laze targets right when you need one and know you could maybe get one, instead of waving your dot around like an idiot waiting for a strike that's never coming because the PO hasn't even taken off yet, Which just gives the xeno infinite time to run away. If SL and the Scout Spec both know when a DS is ready to do strikes they can start lazing a target when its needed. This still gives some xeno enough time to run away because your still lazing targets, but it should help you at least get some of the xeno that aren't paying as much attention.

[Chuckachu]

I would always yell to the SL's to tell me before they set their lasers so I'd already be in flight. Having it be a flag that warns them would work the same.