Firesupport is very very bad (thanks censorship)

It's inaccurate, it's UI is akward to use, it's just 10 times worse than firesupport in DOI.

  1. Inaccuracy. The firesupport never lands o nthe exact spot you called it in, instead it will land a bit to the right or somewhere where it's more "suitable" for the firesupport to go. For example, if you call in a rocket barrage on a building, well guess what, it will go next to it on either sides, but not onto the building itself. Same goes for most arty options, though they're usually wide enoguh to hit your target at least once.

  2. Akward UI. Instead of clicking 2 mouse buttons quickly and then choosing your support, you need to have 2 seperate binds, as well as definetely use your binos to call in support. Why did the whole process got so downgraded? I would rather have the option to use my main weapon or any other item to call in support than be tied to using binos, as well as have the ability to call in observer and ability to choose my support while looking at a target all at the same time.

  3. The Marker. Call me crazy, but that fat red/green light legit is so fat it doesn't go through windows. I tried calling in support through a window and it legit got called on the first wall that was "in my way". That's just BS, where's the pin-point accuracy of call-ins just like in DOI?

  4. IED drones. I'm yet to see someone get killed by these useless shits in my ~70 hours in Sandstorm (closed alpha + betas combined). Not only they tend to go to the either side fro mthe actual target, they also have the tendency to get some height just before exploding, resulting in some pretty looking, but useless fireworks.

I agree, there needs to be a map based system. The combination of insane accuracy, slow and clunky UI, and the need to actually look at the target makes a bad combination.

In real life, indirect fire is used primarily to take out targets without exposing the calling element to direct fire from the target. Maybe have it so that a FO/observer picks a target and it shows up on commander's map, and he can fine tune and call in the fire.

It seems like this is taking a strange tack, it seems that the design is trying to be realistic but also not abused in PvP by support-spamming. That said, it falls short on both of those aims, and I'd suggest a much faster method of calling in fire as the default.

As far as the actual support options themselves, it's hard to say how useful they'd be if we had a better way to call them in.

Imagine being able to use mortars to screen an area behind the objective, so that enemies have to split for their counter. Or calling in air support to arrive in a certain amount of time, so that commanders can stack support options for holding out a point.

This could open up a lot more gameplay methods than "kill a bunch of people in this spot", and can add enormous tactical flexibility if done well.

  1. Mortars are supposed to be inacurate. Irl its actually hard to land a mortar at an exact spot, rocket barrage too (because only insurgent has rocket barrage, i dont think terrorist has a computer-controlled missile afaik) thats why mortars always deployed continuously. But then again 1-2 mortars always land on the spot when im playing so far. Maybe the devs should make the area a bit smaller but thats it.

  2. Maybe, i find the calling support system in DOI is better than sandstorm too. switching to binocular is really unnecessary

  3. Agree, i hope it get fixed soon.

  4. Yep, IED drones are useless af. would be nice if the drone can get inside buildings tho

I didn't play DoI so I don't know what I'm missing.

That said the support system has been greatly improved since the last beta. We didn't even have a position indicator before so you were often just guessing and often bombing your own team. Now with the indicator I find I can aim it quite well. I don't see the same problem with windows that you do — even with precise support like the apache rockets there isn't much difference since it's going to hit the wall anyway.

They also seem to be tweaking the vector stats on each call-in; rocket barrage used to be a lot more accurate and mortars used to come in twice as fast.

Support stacking can already be done with the 2-commander system, or even with one-commander now that the cooldown between call-ins has been shortened. You can't do it with indirect artillery because of the long deployment time but fast support like the Warthog and bomber drones will stack well. I agree the quadcopters could use a buff. It seems like they try to drop the C4 payload when they really ought to just kamikaze. If they did so they'd be in a unique position to clear out interiors in ways the other call-ins can't and really put the fear in Security the same way Insurgents sweat buckets when the choppers show up.

Sure the binocs/observer system is clumsy but you're calling in apaches which are going to get a lot more kills than your rifle. It's a price I'm willing to pay. If the system were too easy I don't think the matches would play as well.

PS: Please put a cooldown on the "Request Observer" message. It's extremely annoying when commanders spam it.

last edited by Doghead

@doghead then you better play observer then instead of ignoring it quit playing just one class all the time and problem solved