Orbital Beacons Function Like Cameras

[Halinder]

Summary (a quick, 2-3 sentence summary): Make it so that when an orbital beacon is activated and deployed, it can be used as a camera from its respective overwatch console.

Benefits (How this will benefit the server and game as a whole): Increased situational awareness for command performing overwatch for a squad, no more mass-FF bombardments, and an added strategic value to their deployment.

Details (Description of how you think this would work, the benefits, etc): Add a button to the overwatch console next to the one allowing for orbital bombardment. When the beacon is off, the camera will send a message such as "There are no active beacons from this squad." When the beacon is on, the camera will display the orbital beacon as if it was a camera, possibly with a flavor text such as "Target locked, displaying satellite feed."

Implementation (Optional, if you have an idea how to implement it): Perhaps the coding would be similar to how SL helmets can be used as cameras.

[Skycave1]

+1. It would really help, and you wont have to chance bombard when a SL tells you to launch the OB when they are being overun, and has no camera, so you fire at his command, hoping they were in the nexus, only to find you you KILLED TEN FUCKING MARINES!!

[Enceri]

+1, I'd love this to be introduced.

[Monoo]

Massive +1, absolutely necessary for beacons to be viable.

[Imperator_Titan]

+1, allows command to choose a time to fire incase the SL who deployed the OB's dies.

[Joe4444]

+1 maybe now xur won't OB his squad (I love you really xur)

[Wubs4Scrubs]

+1

I'm actually amazed that this isn't the way it works currently.

[LordLoko]

+1

This is infintly useful

[solidfury7]

+1 - This would actually make being a BO more useful than it currently is.

[Wubs4Scrubs]

bump, additionally I'd request that anybody who votes one way or the other looks at this topic reads this one as well viewtopic.php?f=59&t=11679&p=124296&hil ... al#p124296 as they are conflicting suggestions and the latter might be a better middle ground than this one

[mosshadow]

+1. This would be very useful.

[UnknownMurder]

bump, additionally I'd request that anybody who votes one way or the other looks at this topic reads this one as well viewtopic.php?f=59&t=11679&p=124296&hil ... al#p124296 as they are conflicting suggestions and the latter might be a better middle ground than this one

They're not conflicting. This is a suggestion for cameras into OB while the other suggestion is about renaming to tell who's whose OB. I don't know where you got that idea.

[Wubs4Scrubs]

They're not conflicting. This is a suggestion for cameras into OB while the other suggestion is about renaming to tell who's whose OB. I don't know where you got that idea.

They're conflicting in the sense that the implementation of both topics would be overkill considering that if the OB functioned as a camera you wouldn't really need names on each OB considering that you could just look and immediately see which one was which. For example if the Delta SL was yelling about how he needed his OB fired upon you could look through the camera and see a bunch of Delta and discern that was the OB which was needed. I wasn't saying that the suggestions are duplicates however the implementation of both suggestions just seemed unnecessary.

[Renomaki]

While this might be useful in some cases, a part of me worries if it'll make it harder to prepare more tactical OBs.

See, when I use an OB, I tend to use it in a way that messes with the minds of xenos. I don't fire it directly on them, but more as they as passing through. It may not work as well in open spaces, but in places like the Nexus, tricking aliens into running away from an OB they hear, only for them to get hit directly by it is very satisfying (more so if a queen was trying to run in for REEEcry, only to panic and flee to avoid an OB).

The thing is, though, what if someone decides to disregard my orders to hold fire and FIRES IT ANYWAY because a xeno was on top of it?

See, a lot of people here don't know how to properly use an OB, treating it like a big grenade more than anything. They always toss it and fire it ASAP, no planning, no waiting, just toss and FIRE FIRE FIRE, as if that'll work.

Infamously, xenos will refuse to stand around for an OB, first time or not, and will always run from beeping. So when you have some trigger happy baldie with a camera feed of an active OB see a bunch of aliens walk over it, there is a good chance he'll ignore my orders to hold fire and FIRE ANYWAY because he thinks OBs will instantly go boom, when it takes several seconds for the artillery to land, and by then, the xenos will have cleared out.

The only time I'd think this was useful is if the SL who triggered it died and was unable to coordinate an OB with his BO, forcing the BO to handle it with his own judgement instead. As useful as that might be, I'd honestly be against it for the most part, simply because I feel I can't trust most BOs to control their trigger finger and trust me when I say "Wait on my mark".

[Halinder]

Bumping.