Right now, Arty is my favourite merc, but he has a fundamental flaw: His artillery strike ability is difficult to use because the angle of incidence is too high. Just a handful of pixels of inaccuracy might translate to 30 ft. in game, leading to wasted cooldown.
The best way to aim artillery strikes would be to allow the player to aim the artillery strike using some type of overhead map, like calling in an airstrike via tablet in Call of Duty. This method permits much greater accuracy, however, there are some intrinsic downsides to this method as well. This can potentially encourage some players to just sit back in spawn, or way farther back from the frontlines than intended, and just spam artillery strikes in safety, essentially playing an entirely different game than Dirty Bomb.
So that would be dumb, anti-fun and against the spirit of the game.
But something does have to be done about the spotting system because it sucks.
So here’s my recommendation, which will use the Call of Duty method as a base and build from that. First, you can continue to aim the artillery strike by pointing. Alternatively, Arty will have three beacons, kind of like Vassili’s motion spotter. These beacons can be seen by other players, and can be thrown a moderate distance ( much shorter than Vassili’s motion spotter ). Once thrown, the beacon will arm after ten second delay. After ten seconds, the beacon will remain active for 90 seconds. The beacon cannot be destroyed, but can be temporarily deactivated if a Redeye deploys smoke over the beacon ( no need for complicated, you can still aim an artillery strike on the edge of the smoke; if there is smoke over the beacon, the beacon turns off ). During this time, if the owner of the beacon is within, say, 400 ft. of the beacon, he can pull out a tablet and aim an artillery strike within a 20 ft. radius of a beacon. An artillery strike can be called onto the beacon a maximum of three times, and after the third artillery strike, the beacon expires.
These changes would provide Arty accurate artillery strikes that could be used without direct line of sight, increasing Arty’s flexibility. For example, an Arty player could place a beacon on an ammo box, and when opposition players go to the ammo box, the Arty player can artillery strike them.
The numbers, of course, can be tweaked as necessary for balance purposes. Additionally, these changes are innately balanced by the following:
The Arty player must visit the location to place the beacon, which prevents players from just hiding in spawn. Additionally, the beacon will automatically expire, forcing the Arty player to return to the location if he wants to renew the beacon. The beacon will be visible to enemy players, giving them warning that their location has been pre-sighted, and while the beacon cannot destroyed, can be countered. Moreover, the Arty must be relatively close to the beacon, and cannot call down an artillery strike on, say, the main road in Bridge from spawn. The ten second activation delay will also prevent this ability from being used reactively, forcing premeditated use.
These changes would also make artillery strikes easier to use in general, entirely avoiding the bullshit we are all familiar with, being one pixel too close to a wall or something, and blocked from using our ability. At least other Arty and Kira players will know what I’m talking about. And at least Kira can still move her laser off a bad plant.
So the real life explanation, for people that absolutely have to have real life explanations, would be that Arty would use time tested methods of pre-sighting positions to dial in accurate artillery strikes. Note that pre-sighting requires no beacon; the beacon exists solely to give enemy players an indication that if they choose to stand there, they may be treated to an all you can eat HE buffet.
Anyway, lots of text, but please read and let me know what you think. Unfortunately, I realize this is a fairly monumental change from a design point of view… so… 