Orbitals follow a predictable pattern

[Warnipple]

Summary (a quick, 2-3 sentence summary):
Orbital bombardments act faster and as a creeping barrage rather than using offsets and randomness.

Benefits (How this will benefit the server and game as a whole):
Predictable patterns to avoid FF. Generally, this pattern could be predicted by marines and the pattern should move away from marines. The main idea is that orbitals clear fortifications rather than kill xenos. They'll create a path for the marines to advance and for xenos to fight them in a new choke.

Details (Description of how you think this would work, the benefits, etc):
Orbital Bombardments take too much time to coordinate and while they're effective, they get metagame all too often, harming marines more often than being effective against xeno structures.

Instead of the offsets, replace them with North/South and East/West options. One from each category can be selected. If none are selected then the orbital acts as it currently does, striking the area around the beacon.

One of North and South can be selected.
One of East and West can be selected.

When fired, the beacon will take those options into account and firing a creeping barrage in that general direction. Each explosion should have a fair amount of distance between the last one. I'd recommend somewhere around 3 +2/-2 tiles for slight randomness. Same amount of explosions and first one just as deadly.

The orbital should come down slightly faster to make the first hit more effective.

Instead of SLs calling beacons with "FIRE ON ALPHA BEACON, OFFSET X+5 Y+10", instead they can say "FIRE ON ALPHA BEACON, NORTH WEST".

[Renomaki]

In WWI, creeping barrages were good at suppressing enemy forces while infantry advanced, and while it might not work as well against a xeno compared to a trench fighter, it would be nice to simplify it and make it more suppressive rather than just a glorified cluster grenade that may or may not hit the right spot.

Knowing xenos, they'll still try to metagame it, and it'll be a lot easier to predict, sure, but on the other hand, it'll still perform it's duty as a suppression device rather than a killzone, scaring xenos away while the marines push up and reclaim ground.

1+

[Snypehunter007]

Old. No support.

Locking.