Arc change

Rise

They should require line of sight to fire on structures.

It makes sense if they are mobile, especially in the quantity they can be created.

From an immersion standpoint it makes no sense to see them firing through walls anyway. That mechanics of firing through walls was just a holdover from the limited maps of NS1, where there was no other way to better simulate indirect fire support. It's not ideal that they fire through walls, and it's really not even necessary if they are mobile and backed up by marines.

From a gameplay standpoint it just has a lot of bad elements to it.
The arc rush trains you can't kill before they take out a whole room parked from outside of it, giving you no chance to utilize your defensive setups whatsoever.
The unintuitiveness of it, trying to figure out where the fire is coming from through the walls.

GORGEous

This doesn't work. How would they kill whips right around the corner from them? They can't get into LOS without getting killed by the whip.

WasabiOne

REPOST from a similar thread - so ATM the arc builds way to fast out of the Robo IMO, so now I have a bunch of them even at 15 res.... roll them out though and they can be killed very easy once deployed and smart fades will use vortex on them before the finally charge for fire to block the shot, then attack them. I like arc's but I think they just need some tweaking 15 res seems fine I just think they need to take a lot longer to build from the robo, or make the speed production an upgrade of the robo at an additional 30-40 res. Static defenses like sentries are not very much fun, they are good with 2-3 in some situations like close spawns.

Namm

Line of sight, yes, agreed. If you look up 'unintuitive' in a dictionary chances are you'll find something in the line with "mobile siege cannon that shoots sound energy projectiles through walls".

<!--quoteo(post=1945256:date=Jun 20 2012, 06:28 PM:name=GORGEous)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (GORGEous @ Jun 20 2012, 06:28 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1945256"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->This doesn't work. How would they kill whips right around the corner from them? They can't get into LOS without getting killed by the whip.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I said this in another thread (how couldn't I? There are as much threads about ARC's as there are ARC's in a typical ARC train), but a really easy solution is to make it possible for the comm to target the ground, and let the ARC's have enough splash damage. You could target the ground in RTS games for a variety of reasons as far back as Dune 2 (that's as far back as it goes), so why not in NS2?

Rise

<!--quoteo(post=1945256:date=Jun 20 2012, 09:28 AM:name=GORGEous)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (GORGEous @ Jun 20 2012, 09:28 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1945256"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->This doesn't work. How would they kill whips right around the corner from them? They can't get into LOS without getting killed by the whip.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
You send more arcs than they have whips.
Supported by marines, you park them around the corner and shoot it out.
And you support it with flamethrowers if necessary.

This idea that the marines should be entitled to decimate entire whip farms in seconds without any chance of retaliation by them just doesn't work out in practice.
It's not inuitive or immersive as a mechanic, and it's broken gameplay.

Marine turrets get to fight back against whips, and it's a lot harder to get a whip set up within range of an enemy base, and they aren't as devastating once set up.

hapro

Sounds like a good way to increase stalemating.

Rise

<!--quoteo(post=1945273:date=Jun 20 2012, 09:58 AM:name=Namm)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Namm @ Jun 20 2012, 09:58 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1945273"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Line of sight, yes, agreed. If you look up 'unintuitive' in a dictionary chances are you'll find something in the line with "mobile siege cannon that shoots sound energy projectiles through walls".<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

No, you can have something be fantasy and still be intuitive at the same time.

Intuitive:
capable of being perceived or known by intuition.
Intuition:
the quality or ability of having such direct perception or quick insight.


From a gameplay standpoint it's not inuitive to have arcs firing through walls.
It's not what players expect the weapon to behave like, it doesn't look good, it's impossible to percieve where it's coming from, etc.

Namm

<!--quoteo(post=1945284:date=Jun 20 2012, 07:35 PM:name=hapro)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (hapro @ Jun 20 2012, 07:35 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1945284"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Sounds like a good way to increase stalemating.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Quite the opposite. With ARC's requiring line of sight, turtled Marines can't use ARC's to magically remove any Whip or advance Crag within proximity (and maybe slowly inch their way outward, gaining ground and even winning the game sometimes). Stalemating rarely/never occur because of Alien turtling, and since ARC's would remain as devastating as before against structures, damage-wise, I don't see why that would change. Whips around corners would be splashed to death (if targeting the ground with ARC's) and I don't think a few Hydras can stop even one ARC before they get blown to bits.