In addition to current "beacons" and "marine" firing for Siege Cannons on structures, I believe that more control is necessary at the cost of resources, to give a further focus fire on specific areas, such as defense towers or the hive itself, rather than wasting the full force on frontline and firstseen offensive chambers.

This would entail a volley or time based firing beacon specific to all Siege Cannons in range, used as a Target Beacon, a 2 resource cost which forces direct firing on selectable targets or specific locations. This uses all Siege Cannons in range like a Signal Beacon, but continues firing on the specific location for a slightly elongated time, since this has to be used in conjunction with current modes of firing anyway.

So, while a Signal Beacon or the lone marine may be a good, resource saving way to remove installations, if specific defenses need to be cracked, or AoE Management is wanted for time restrictions, it is viable.

kinda cool

my first instinct is to support the idea

new tactics like rushing seige and spot sieging hives could spring from this

not to mention it's a small tweak to the game, perhaps to balance out how cheap focus siege fire costs it could be something that has to be upgraded to give the nanos more strength to fight the bacterium in that particular spot for some time


yadayadayada

lets see what zunni says on the matter

but then you get a akmbo weapon that basicaly says drop siege here to insta kill hive theres a reasion it kills the chamber s first and that so the alien team has a chance to def the hive

Well I can see a certain disdain for it, but, it is still limited by range, and the ability of the commander to see, as well as expend resources in this manner.

Upgrading to unlock this feature wouldn't be bad, as well as including the current necessity for constant use of resources to facilitate this attack. Though I have been considering the problem of simply taking out a hive with no direct interference, and that is, it needs to require a commander's attention.

Thus, low cost but short use and per siege cannon is best, forcing the commander to constantly select sieges and select a target, and I am thinking now that it should require a selection be made of an enemy structure, just striking a point is a bit more annoying, means use of both sensory sweeps/marine spotters and the cannons.

That way, I think the commander would need to be rather evolved and it could become more of a blitz kind of attack to help disable the most of an installation with shorter time frames but greater expenses.

I beleive the seiges currently only attack the closest scanned/sighted target.

But this would introduce better use of the resource (asset in this case, been the seige wepons themselves.)

Commanders would also have to watch a little more closely, as when seigeing WOL, to move the target becon along, in case you've seiged out a piece of WOL, and are just blasting away a nothing for the remaining ticks of the targeting becon.

As the for the upgrade. It could applied specifically to the TF itself. So seieges in range of that TF, would attack the specified "lighted" target. Much the way marines were directed to "attack" a target in NS2 beta 1-6.

horrible idea

its already possible to target sieges to an extent, though.

Don't like it, give tha aliens a change to defend.

Interesting idea, however I must agree. A good alien team will have chambers in the way to protect the hive as an early warning.

Besides, marines have enough power taking down hives with shotties if needs be. The tf, with all its mighty power, is only a supplement to the marine force. In that event, it should not replace specific shooting. Leave that to shotties.

-Reiter

i say no, unless ya drop there damage down to 150, but even then i still say no, as its moraly wrong

i don't really like this idea since it might make it too easy to take down a hive. a comm with enough res can take it down very easily. having to upgrade it can be an alternative or something, but may be too troublesome for comms? i'll leave this open for now

The siege kills whatever it can target (through Marine LOS -and- fire, or Observatory scanning) and is closest to. If a Marine pops into a hive room with DCs on the wall bordering the sieges and fires at the Hive, the Hive gets sieged. If he fires at an RT that's behind the Hive -and- the DCs, the RT gets sieged. If a Commander scans the hive room, all three are detected (DCs, Hive, and RT) but the DCs are destroyed first due to proximity. If a Commander really wanted to, he could place his ping far enough away from the DCs so that only the Hive was registered. The DCs would remain unscanned and thus untargeted, leaving the Hive to get kerblasted on it's own. I realize not every map has the space to do this, but it really depends on the structure placement. Whether or not you truly want all of your upgrade chambers destroyed so the Hive can live 10 seconds longer is up to debate, however..

You confuse me, stop it.

The only thing is, the sieges kill a hive exceptionally quickly, and targetting a room full of oc's, and hitting only the hive with 10 marines outside in an already marine biased (early) game, especially in pubs.

hence why "advanced seige targeting" or whatever is a upgrade that above advanced armoury / observery on the tech tree

A quicker solution would be a Scanner Sweep with a much smaller range. It would do the exact same thing.

So, when you have the option to scanner sweep, hold it down and the range of it grows, costing more energy, from 15 to 25 ep (energy points). If you want to cancel it, hit enter or something...

Interesting idea.

I'm torn.. on one hand it's a cool way of directing damage

On the other aliens use chambers as a way of buying time from a siege attack...

Hmmm.. I'll move this to future ideas and see how things develop.
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