Earlier mortar / arty strikes plz

[Ace42]

AFAIK it takes an hour before Arty / Mortar / JDAM strikes become active. Is this correct? If so, it would explain why, at present, they don't get used at all. It takes so long for them to activate that squads are too engrossed in their current groove to think about using them. No-one plays civ anyway due to the spawn-timers, and the fact that they can't drop arty for a whole hour detracts further from their usefulness. I've seen one commander in a dozen games over the last few days, and he was terrible; as I said in another post, this is because commanding has become an incredibly passive experience, and who wants to sit back and have no real effect on combat for an hour before they can start the fireworks? Especially as some of the INS maps I've seen have only lasted about an hour and a half... That's two arty strikes, right at the very end, total. Great for the two civs who get to drop them, rubbish for every other civ in the game up to that point...

Personally, I think the need for a "wait" is kinda redundant - it takes a minimum of 15 mins for a mortar to "charge up", right? That should be plenty of time for squads to get out of main and get rallies / firebases up before anyone can main-rape with arty; and it would certainly dissuade people from camping the mains. For the arty / JDAM it's even longer, yah?

However, even if you assume the initial wait isn't redundant; could we AT LEAST have the "wait" linked to a buildable asset? Like arty / mortar / jdam strikes are only available if there's a firebase up (I mean, that's what firebases are for, right? Directing fire?), and thus, on top of the initial "charge up" time, there's also the time it takes for firebases to be deployed, and makes asset building and protection even more significant than it is already...

It would be kinda cool if the arty / mortar battery had to be placed somewhere on the map as a totally separate asset, and thus was another important target to eliminate (a job for SF kits, anyone?) and defend; I seem to recall that was being discussed, but hasn't been implemented. If placing the actual "pieces" isn't an option (a JDAM airstrip is an obviously challenging asset to design and place), and you don't just want to use firebases (a great short-term solution); then you could just design "observation" / "tracking" posts that merely enable the timer?

[Gunners87]

IMO that's the thing this game isn't set to be a complete realism. With how some of the maps and causalities are played out, you'll think there was a peak oil crisis going on or something.
Plus this sounds like a suggestion from someone who came from vanilla. That's one thing I hated about vanilla, commanders having their personal air strikes that could take out dozens of players.
And it's fine as it is on a 30 minute wait. I've seen the artillery strike used to devastating effects on flags and heavily entrenched bunkers, winning the map

[Ace42]

That's one thing I hated about vanilla, commanders having their personal air strikes that could take out dozens of players.
And it's fine as it is on a 30 minute wait. I've seen the artillery strike used to devastating effects on flags and heavily entrenched bunkers, winning the map

Ahem, read my post again. It's not about the 30 minute wait; it's about the INITIAL one-hour wait before the strikes even start charging. I'm not saying commanders should be able to nuke stuff without requests; I'm not saying everyone should be able to request a strike; I'm not saying JDAMs should drop every 15 minutes like mortar strikes do.

I'm just saying that they shouldn't only come into play in the dying minutes of a game when the result's already a forgone conclusion and most people have forgot they're even implemented.

And so far, I've only see ONE area-of-effect attack used out of every single .85 game I've played, and that was with ME as the commander reminding a very proficient squad that it was available for their use; and then it got used right at the end, it literally went down and got us the last half-dozen tickets before our inevitable victory. As we were camping the last flag anyway, the opposition would've sustained the same casualties within a few minutes of trying to break out / ticket bleed; making the whole area attack pointless.