Remove orbital beacon beeping sound.

[completelynewguy]

+1, either mute it or decrease its volume.

[OatzAndHoes]

+1
Why would something intended to destroy the enemy make a massive beeping noise to alert those nearby. SLs and BOs giving a warning to marines should be enough.

[UnknownMurder]

+1

I tire of wasting my time trying to get the Orbital Strike in the right spot where the aliens can't escape from. Because of the evolution of the aliens, they've become smarter and better to build defenses that counters the orbital strike by slithering away fast as possible. With this being implemented, I can now imagine the possibilities of sneaking Orbital Strike under the backpack or pretend it's a throw and strike when it's not as aliens runs away and lure them in to their own demise.

[Swagile]

Yeah right now a OB is just a SADAR that aliens can hear and see from a mile away.

The beep delay is enough time for even the slowest prae to get out of firing range.

Removing the beep though will make xenos worry and think "is it really going to go off?" so its a good area of denial weapon.

Or use it as a surprise under a backpack to wipe out xenos.

[HalfdeadKiller]

+1 I am surprised the beeping is still here after about a year of it being implemented. The same issue still occurs, xenos just run away. I've always wished that the OB would produce an announcement or something for marines only to hear in the chat window.

[Araulius]

+1, make ob's viable please.

[Reuben Owen]

oh yeah, I'll still +1 this

although I think xenos will just stay away from them as much as possible

[TheMaskedMan2]

-1
Use strategy with OB's. Hide them and use offsets, I think they are fine. At most i'd be fine with making the beeping -> explosion time a bit shorter.

[MrJJJ]

-1
Use strategy with OB's. Hide them and use offsets, I think they are fine. At most i'd be fine with making the beeping -> explosion time a bit shorter.

I once tried to hide it by not placing them in direct sight and told my SO to bomb into north and east on big red so it would hit xenos.

You can hear OB through the damn walls apparently, because after i done this, all xenos ran away and we only killed one hivelord, the other day, another SL tried this and i heard it as a queen, again, no line-of sight, through walls and managed to run off.

Offsets and hiding can only go so far when your enemy just hears them through EVERYTHING

[TheMaskedMan2]

I once tried to hide it by not placing them in direct sight and told my SO to bomb into north and east on big red so it would hit xenos.

You can hear OB through the damn walls apparently, because after i done this, all xenos ran away and we only killed one hivelord, the other day, another SL tried this and i heard it as a queen, again, no line-of sight, through walls and managed to run off.

Offsets and hiding can only go so far when your enemy just hears them through EVERYTHING

Even so, they are useful for getting hostiles out of entrenched positions and making a push. You just need the right moments. Don't aim the offset at them, but where they WILL be. So behind them. In my opinion.

[TheDonkified]

+1, OBs are supposed to be an effective weapon against xenos that takes time to use, not a smoke grenade to weed them out of an entrenched position that costs beacons AND time.

[MrJJJ]

Even so, they are useful for getting hostiles out of entrenched positions and making a push. You just need the right moments. Don't aim the offset at them, but where they WILL be. So behind them. In my opinion.

I did precisely just that, aimed behind their flank, but the OB takes about 8 seconds before it actually starts dropping the bombs, thats more than enough for even the slowest caste in the game to move away from, as soon as the third bomb hit, the xenos re-rushed back in and re-weeded the entire damn place so quickly, what little we advanced (read: 5 tiles) was instantly retaken.

The sound man, just no matter how you seem to hide it, they will hear it anyway, even if you put it in a room surrounded by 9 walls with no way to get to it i think.

[TheMaskedMan2]

I did precisely just that, aimed behind their flank, but the OB takes about 8 seconds before it actually starts dropping the bombs, thats more than enough for even the slowest caste in the game to move away from, as soon as the third bomb hit, the xenos re-rushed back in and re-weeded the entire damn place so quickly, what little we advanced (read: 5 tiles) was instantly retaken.

The sound man, just no matter how you seem to hide it, they will hear it anyway, even if you put it in a room surrounded by 9 walls with no way to get to it i think.

In that case I think the delay from beeping till bomb drop should be shorter, I just REALLY don't like the idea of completely undectable nukes coming out of nowhere on an entire hives face. Perhaps if the beeps are shorter, and closer to the actual impact time, it will give Xenos on the border a chance if they are paying attention, but T3's right in the middle? They will get hit.

Anyways I think OBs could use a bit of tweaking, I just don't think the solution is "no more beeps".

[Sneakyr]

I, however, do like the solution of no more beeps. I have only had 1 OB that actually changed anything over the course of the battle, and it was because the ayys were all stuck from escaping by an ice colony ladder. +1

[Butterrobber202]

I see no reason the Aliens should get a warning when the Marines are about to attack.

I mean, we don't get an indication before the Queen Screech do we?

+1

[YungCuz]

I see no reason the Aliens should get a warning when the Marines are about to attack.

I mean, we don't get an indication before the Queen Screech do we?

+1

I mean TBH the only indication of that is a Queen approaching fast even then we get no time to react to it unless you know about it before hand.

[JackStorm]

I see no reason the Aliens should get a warning when the Marines are about to attack.

I mean, we don't get an indication before the Queen Screech do we?

+1

Exactly. Queen's screech is like unlimited OB without beeping. Marines can't react to that, the screech is screen sized, you can't even run from that horde because you are stunned. You just will end spamtackled and dragged away with no chance to resist.

+1

[Jeser]

Also considering OB is quite weak. OB now has 3 explosions. At least 2 need to hit T2 to kill it. Last time I saw OB in action, hivelord decided he is too cool to run from OB and it was struck by OB. Then he stood up and pooped weeds. Ye-e-e-eah, "Orbital bombardment". It was 1 week ago.

[Butterrobber202]

bump.

[SagaSword]

I agree with TheMaskedMan2, we should decrease the time OB explodes instead. I also suggest increasing the offset range by 2 or 3 tiles more because aliens will go fuck this shit and run very far away so this is a good countermeasure for their metagaming.

[Cupcakes_n_Hacksaws]

Hmm. currently I think OBs are pretty damn useless right now since it has a small AOE and doesn't do much damage, and I agree that the large beeping and the delay between arming and exploding make it hard to actually get hits with it... how about instead of a loud beeping noise, small red text appears in the chat bar, indicating it begins to rapidly flash? It'd reward xenos who are keeping an eye out for it and the chat log, and punish those who aren't. They still get a warning but it's not as blatant as that beeping.