/resident artillery/packered mortar gun junkie enters thread
My idea is for a stationary or mobile artillery gun that can fire over a high arc and take out heavily entreched positions EFFECTIVELY Manned by one person (The commander if stationary) or a crew if possible. Its drawbacks should be slow speed, difficulty over rough terrain and high vulnerability to aircraft. I think it would be cool if the imperial variant fired a cluster bomb. Good against enemies over a wide area but not fantastic at hitting precise targets. Heres a work of art I whipped up to illustrate.
Let's see now 
...
- Fires weapons over long distances, check
- Heavy-hitting weapon, check
- Effectively manned by one person, check
- Difficulty over rough terrain, check
- Slow, check
- Easy target for aircraft, check
- Firepower greatly amplified by teamwork, check
:drumroll:
♥
No, wait... wrong free runner 
. But you get the idea 
.
Driving an artillery vehicle is possibly the least action packed thing you could do. That's why in the BF series they distributed that ability to the commander, not a vehicle.
Lots of things in FS aren't action-packed, and there are those who play it for other things than running-and-gunning. The sniper is one example, the commander is another. Then there's sitting in a turret on Yavin, driving a cap ship in Taloraan, and, of course, those moments when you play SL and find that the best thing to do is stay out of the fight, helping your team mates by using sensor pings and just staying alive as a mobile spawn point.
The current armoured freerunner with mortar is a nice way to get some kills but its difficult to judge how far your shots have gone out of Line Of Sight (LOS) - but if you could effectively hide out of LOS and bombard a position with impunity then its not helping the mod much. Its not necessarily a teamwork vehicle. ( i know the 'spotting magnoculars help, but are very rarely utilized)
Two words: Forward observers. Simply asking in team chat how your shots are hitting can be enough to get someone to direct fire for you, and I usually find that when I use the chat to tell players that they can mark targets with binoculars, at least one of them will do it. This isn't advanced teamwork, it's merely a matter of seeing where the shots land for then to relay this information using team/squad chat or VOIP.
Edit: Oh, and when placing a marker, please take a sec to tell the mortar artillery what you've marked (such as "Imperial infantry squad marked" or "Imperial tanks marked".
Here is an in-depth explanation of how the artillery system works.
I agree that the Imperials should have some sort of artillery platform, though. We'll see. Meanwhile, don't underestimate the power of the ordinary PMG. I've yet to see several of them used in tandem to effect in a 'mortar squad', though me and Jafar tried it out once, but I've done some experimentation with it myself and once or twice I've been slightly devastating with it at range.
And Gwynzer is right about still needing to fix the current artillery.
Agreed. Hopefully there'll be a fix up soon. Using it right now feels like cheating, since I can sit out of range and rack up kills without the enemy coming to get me because they can't tell where I'm firing from.
"One of the bitches actually gave birth while she was attacking, and her puppies joined in on the carnage."
--the awesomeness that is Boatmurdered.
Closed Alpha Test & Deth..
