So i've been playing odyssey more and i will have to say, the sphere of combat is totally out of whack, and almost non-existent. More generally, the scale of the game is out of whack below ship level. Of course this is an issue that has come up before many times:
First of all, draw examples from the real world today. Why? Because in Elite there are cases where it seems like things are a step back from the present. The sniper rifle has a stock 100m range, whereas IRL snipers can engage up to 2km or sometimes more. Other weapons have less than 40m range, which IRL would be pistol range. Heck, an air pistol can do 10m. An air rifle can do 100m!
Similarly, when it comes to the balance between infantry, ground, air and naval interactions, the real world is informative. You need infantry to entrench and hold positions, make their way through areas where vehicles would be blind, encumbered and vulnerable, to infiltrate spaces covertly, perform reconnaissance, engage in counter-insurgency, combat search and rescue, etc. Ground vehicles support infantry by providing heavier weapons, better protection, greater mobility, as mobile forward-operating bases or taxi services. Aircraft provide Close Air Support to ground assets, maintain air superiority via Combat Air Patrol, do bombing runs, assist with transport and Combat Search and Rescue operations, put out fires, COIN, recon, etc etc. vehiocles and infantry have ways of countering air, but then air can counter them too, sometimes with support.
So then your role definitions are:
Edit: Phoenix_Dfire has an excellent suggestion further in this thread, too: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/detailed-suggestions-on-sphere-of-combat.583170/post-9331802
Edit2: Forgot one more point - maybe the SRV should extend the sensor range for its mothership or wing ships? Display ground targets and turrets from a further distance for the main ship. Might need some balancing.
- Just where is the combat triangle, exactly?
- Why do on foot weapons damage ships so much?
- Should there be shield domes around surface combat zones?
First of all, draw examples from the real world today. Why? Because in Elite there are cases where it seems like things are a step back from the present. The sniper rifle has a stock 100m range, whereas IRL snipers can engage up to 2km or sometimes more. Other weapons have less than 40m range, which IRL would be pistol range. Heck, an air pistol can do 10m. An air rifle can do 100m!
Similarly, when it comes to the balance between infantry, ground, air and naval interactions, the real world is informative. You need infantry to entrench and hold positions, make their way through areas where vehicles would be blind, encumbered and vulnerable, to infiltrate spaces covertly, perform reconnaissance, engage in counter-insurgency, combat search and rescue, etc. Ground vehicles support infantry by providing heavier weapons, better protection, greater mobility, as mobile forward-operating bases or taxi services. Aircraft provide Close Air Support to ground assets, maintain air superiority via Combat Air Patrol, do bombing runs, assist with transport and Combat Search and Rescue operations, put out fires, COIN, recon, etc etc. vehiocles and infantry have ways of countering air, but then air can counter them too, sometimes with support.
So then your role definitions are:
- Infantry - take or infiltrate structures, steal goods, outright raids and skirmishes, disable defences, designate targets for air or ground vehilces. Can counter air and ground by using dedicated weapons, unless dealing with very light vehicles (e.g. open vehicles, unarmored helicopters and cars, lucky shots on planes). Virtually no counter to naval except boarding action manning shore defences.
- Vehicles - support infantry by providing heavier and longer range fire support, being tankier than infantry, rapid transport and redeployment, increased storage and being able to serve as a mobile FOB, provide anti-air defence, provide better optics and vision and sometimes, be a platform for long range high payload missile strikes against ground and naval targets.
- Air - provide support to ground forces against other ground targets with (very) long and medium range strikes, maintain air superiority, suppress enemy air defences, recon with high power optics and radar (e.g. AWACS), rapid transport of infantry, vehicles and material
- Naval - shore bombardment, securing sea routes, anti-piracy, large scale transport and evacuation, weapons platform for aircraft and cruise missiles, anti-air defence.
- Fixed ground assets - housing of people, goods and materials, providing a base of operations across theaters, anti-air or anti-sea defence, large/numerous weapon emplacements, holding strategic land or sea routes, etc.
- Ships have handicaps vs ground when it comes to awareness. Infantry cannot be targeted. it is also hard to control ships in planets with medium to high gravity. These are balancing factors against ships and should be exploited to establish this sphere.
- Current arsenal of ships vs ground is underwhelming. It basically boils down to using rockets, and to a lesser extent mines. Gimballed weapons or turrets are only useful if attacked by a ground asset, or if it can be targeted from the air. This usually happens at very close ranges (<2km).
- Lasers/MCs are not very effective against infantry. This should not be the case. These are very powerful weapons designed for ship shields and armour. Infantry being able to tank them without a care is really silly. They are difficult to aim without sensor assistance so this shouldn't be much of a problem.
- Introduce specialised ground sensors that can pick up infantry and vehicles, but can only be used with much weaker anti-infantry weapons (think of this like door mounted machine guns on helicopters). This could be an engineering pathway added to existing engineers for odyssey owners.
- Infantry weapons and shields need to be toned down substantially. They have to be weaker than SRV shields at stock. Once fully engineered and upgraded, infantry shields can be at par with stock 2A shields. Weapons should not exceed stock C1 hardpoints after engineering+all upgrades, specialised anti-air weapons can be equivalent to C2 stock hardpoints.
- It might be interesting to add reverb cascade mods to infantry or ground vehicle rockets, and phasing sequence or sensor/gimbal disruption to vehicle or fixed anti-ship weapons.
- Let settlements have shields that need to be disabled by infantry or need to be worn down by ships. These can be fairly tanky depending on settlement size etc. Shield generator should be targetable from some distance to allow for use of torpedoes and mines with reverb cascade. This will make team missions way more interesting.
- Skirmisher and sentinel weapons have to be deadlier than at least grade 2 infantry weapons.
- Add binoculars
- Add the ability for laser designation of targets by vehicles and infantry. Add a ship module that can work with such laser designation. Introduce new weapons or engineering for missiles, torps, mines that make them laser seeking.
- Introduce the equivalent of real world SAM/AAA sites with radars and launchers, allow the radars to be disabled by infantry or targeted by aircraft from range (maybe torpedo or seeker missiles engineered for Suppression of Enemy Air Defence by becoming an air-to-ground Anti-Radiation Missile.
- Add team missions where air and vehicle support is heavily recommended, otherwise it becomes tougher. This helps tie in Horizons with Odyssey.
- C4 hardpoints need "shore bombardment" style weapons. Maybe have weapon mods for cannons that do larger AOE damage? Or intro turreted C4 dumbfire missiles. Basically, Cutter/Anaconda/Corvette/T10 need to be able to perform naval support roles.
- Infantry should be squishy unless heavily upgraded. In general, they should have little to moderate effectiveness against vehicles unless using specialised weapons and upgrades/engineering. Similarly, they should have little effectiveness against ships bigger than a sidewinder or eagle. They could work to disable ship modules so that larger guns on the battlefield can take the ship out / make it flee.
- Infantry should be the eyes of vehicles and ships, and help them get through enemy defences or target enemy infantry.
- Vehicles should have high effectiveness against infantry but moderate effectiveness against the small ships (or unshielded ships). Engineered ships should not be very vulnerable to unspecialised ground vehicles.
- Ships either suffer from poor visibility of ground units or do get sensor support but weak anti-infantry weapons (of course rockets bypass this limitation). Overall they're strong against both ground and infantry in the open, but have to be vary of specialised weapons and large settlement defences which can inflict module damage on larger ships or kill smaller ones outright.
- Settlement shields should be a thing.
- Stronger AA should be a thing, but it should also be something that can be countered with adequate preparation.
Edit: Phoenix_Dfire has an excellent suggestion further in this thread, too: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/detailed-suggestions-on-sphere-of-combat.583170/post-9331802
Edit2: Forgot one more point - maybe the SRV should extend the sensor range for its mothership or wing ships? Display ground targets and turrets from a further distance for the main ship. Might need some balancing.
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