(MAJOR Suggestion) Sattalite view.

[Huscar]

ehhh vice versa Huscar

bzradar will show everything on the map
I didnt know bzview exsisted till I've read this post

Uhm, yeah I suck at cheating.

[DarkFox]

Hemp what have you been smok.....
Oh, right, yeah.

[Marksman]

Well, the Scion can put their service bay in the field, but ISDF can't. ISDF can put bunkers in the field, but Scion can't. Well they could, but it's expensive and risky for their tech tree, and they only get one.

If suddenly everyone had satalite view everywhere, that balance would go away. Is that delicate enough to notice?

[PhoeniX-FlamE]

Acutaly, it doesnt metter much

and besides, scions have blink, its much safer blinking home, or anywhere u need to be isntead of hoping in a bunker

[Jwk the Hemp Monkey]

The scion relay bunker isn't just a bunker...its critical to their tech tree...

[Sonic]

Personally, I want to see a bit more protection to the pilot in a comm bunker or overseer.  Its too damn annoying to be killed by your own units as they fire at something else.  I mean the bunkers and overseer's should be shielding the pilot from explosions and stuff, isn't that a point of a bunker?

I would love it if you could also customize your factory/recycler from the com bunker.  Would make things alot more easier to alterate your weapons.  ISDF have SP-STab, equip deflection...uh ho, they switch to plasma, go with aborbtion!

[APCs r evil]

If you had missed the second "b" we could have had ourselves a little fight.

[Jwk the Hemp Monkey]

The idea was to make the pilot get out of his tank at times to heighten the danger, and hence the fun.

and although thats a good concept...it has ended up with any sort of competition (e.g. a tough MPI or Strat) meaning the person who goes in the bunker isn't fighting as hard as they could.

The *cost* of managing things from the bunker is that you cannot pilot a ship, and if even just one stray mdm gets inside the bunker, you die.

Therefore, commanding from that view simply...well...hasn't happened. It doesn't happen even in MPI much, let alone strat...

So, by doing this suggestion the cost of having access to better power management tools is your ship standing still whilst your distracted (snipe or ambush anyone?)....

This is a much more acceptable risk, but it is still a risk. Meaning that going around in your ship commanding does have its benifits...
Also, taking out the command bunker is now a useful tactic vs ISDf because

one) it means they can't make sabres
two) the comander has to haul his ship all the way back to base just to build something...

I think it would improve the strat, improve the MPI...hell...just improve the game if it was done.
If some people disagree...then make it a shell option or something. Make it 'possiable'...

Which probably isn't too hard since in 1.2 you can do it in the singleplayer with just a simple in-built code....

[Spawn]

its fully possible with dll...

[Jwk the Hemp Monkey]

Perhaps, i have no idea, but i don't even know fully what a dll is, let alone those who would make it....

However, if its fully possiable with dll, could it be made a pre-packaged option? Doesn't doing it purely by dll and not having it as a pre-set option mean it would only be available on certain maps? I would far rather it was available on any map.....

[squirrelof09]

once you activate it game.cheat bzview and if you got the bzgame_keys.cfg  you can press shift or ctrl + f11 i believe, and it works like the bunker, i think unless you want to type it in the console (view.satellite) hell i dunno what it is in the console but there you go.
i suck at explaning but right now i am not at school.

O WAIT i ment i was at school, i had to go at the time and just had to type faster and go, so what i ment is i was at school.

[Angelwing]

Wasn't there something done similar to this? BZ2RTS I believe, only that made the game permanently in the 'command' view instead of being able to activate it with a key.

Commanding from bunkers is kinda fun in 4-ways and large MPI maps, but you wouldn't even think about it in strat. To me the 2 biggest issues is that most of the time you're leaving a ship (usually something like a blasttank) without a pilot AND you can't defend the location you're at until you get back in.

Personally I'd be happy with being able to interface with the satelite from a vehicle, not neccessarily with a hotkey but just without the need to exit the ship at least. You'd think that with the technology on the craft they'd be able to do that...
Being able to set fac configs/etc from the comm bunker is nice too, although I think that should still be done as a pilot so you've still got an actual reason to enter the damn thing.

[PhoeniX-FlamE]

option sounds ok, personaly I dont like the idea that much...

[Jwk the Hemp Monkey]

I agree with angels point about having to enter a factory...the number of times i have sneaked inside and stolen a ship as the comander has come along. Its invaluable. It also make you want to protect the factory more, cause now it costs time *and* resources to make, instead of just resources.

Anyway, wasn't there something in bz1 about how because you use biometal, your communications are pretty much un-hackable, and in my mind it seems like the only ones who found a way to hack were the cerberi....

[mrtwosheds]

hmm I seem to remember from my noob days, that using the bunker view in strat usually resulted in getting stuck in that view and being unable to logout of the com bunker, probably something to do with resyncs.