Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-68.184.198.249-20131127041414/@comment-24335709-20131224223247

Newbie to PS2, but I have so many ideas about carriers. First, on the capabilities of the carriers, they should be tied to facilities your empire controls. For example, controlling a tech plant will reduce the cost of aerospace and mechanized equipment and vehicles spawned from the carrier, and improve the effectiveness of weapons on the carrier. A bio-lab will enable a teleporter to the carrier from the bio-lab, and also provides an anti-personnel shield. An amp station will not only affect the mounted weaponry of the carrier, but it would also provide ballistic shields.

In order to use the orbital strikes, you'd need to control at least one tech plant, amp station, and bio lab, considering you'd need the ability to maintain the cannon, supply it power, and provide personnel to use it. Losing a facility makes the carrier vulnerable to enemy attack, and while the carrier may be indestructible, having an opposing empire disable your OS would make it unusable for a certain amount of time.

Losing a tech station means the carrier will have reduced active defenses against enemies, with more expensive aircraft and MAX bursters. Not only that, I believe that the carrier should be stranded in hover mode when a tech plant is gone, making a true carrier assault a concentrated effort!

If an enemy empire takes your bio-lab, then reinforcements grind to a halt, and the anti-personnel shields drop, allowing drop pods and galaxies of infantry to rain on the carrier.

Finally, without an amp station, carrier emplacements will overheat faster, but with all the gunfire focused on them, it wouldn't matter. Even without infantry aboard the carrier, gunfire should still cause damage to the core/generator/delivery system when fired in the right place.

Now, orbital strikes shouldn't just be click and kill. They should require tons of coordination between the entire region. Squad leaders should have the ability to set the beacons for OSs that have a relatively long cooldown. Now, in order for the carriers to fire their OS, preparations must be made. Once the beacon is set, then faction members must report to the carrier and access a terminal and choose to use their resources. If they agree, then while they are on the carrier and an OS is being prepared, their resources slowly dwindle. The more players volunteering their resources, the faster the OS charges. Once an area has been hit by an OS, beacons won't be able to be used for a short time due to interference.

I think there should also be different types of OSs. For example, depending on which resource is used the most during the charging process, a different OS will occur. More tech resources would cause an artillery strike mainly focusing on armor and sundys. Aerospace resources would create an EMP, knocking aircraft out of the air when come within the blast radius, (not destroying them, but disabling them and still giving the pilots a chance to glide for a crash landing). Infantry resources would drop a massive checmical weapon, killing those outdoor almost instantly, and dealing heavy damage to infantry near doors and windows for several seconds. Only those in deep cover or certain vehicles will be immune to it.

Sorry, 12 hours at work with nothing to do makes my mind wander, and I love this game so much I tend to obsess about it. An orbital strike should be a game-changer, so it should be an effort to acquire and maintain that kind of firepower.