I'm thinking ground control 2 here. One of the cooler things about that game is that when you fire the artillery tanks, the shells actually arc into the air and if you look up you can see massive big glowing things in the sky, which is kind of cool because it: A: Looks awesome. B: Lets you see there is artillery firing. C: Gives you an idea of where it's firing from and to. The last two I think would be a nice addition to the empires gameplay, rather than just getting hit by this devastating explosion which wipes out half your squad but which doesn't actually look much more impressive than a tank shell, it would make more sense for artillery shells to be very visible and have an explosion effect more in-keeping with their power, it also means infantry can see artillery firing from long distances and take some cover, which is again a good thing because it means they have a fair chance, rather than just being killed in the middle of a fight. It also adds to the cinematics of empires which is good for PR and one of the common complaints against the mod. For the moment you could just tack an animated sprite that looks a bit like a photon torpedo from the original star trek onto the shells when they're fired and it would help.
Fireball-type artillery always looked sort of goofy to me. Smoke trails (especially like those used for the headcrab canisters in HL2) would be nice, though.
A thicker smoke trail and perhaps rocket propulsion for the first couple of seconds would be acceptable, although I would like to see things like plasma cannons firing actual plasma balls instead of shells for cinematic purposes.
I second the trails of plasma. However have a bluish tint for BE and a redish tint for NF. Why? Because it would be awesome.
Team colored artillery. Why doesn't the army use this today!? Also, america really needs to switch their friendly fire on for god's sake.
A slight nit I must pick with that is that an ice blue is a very impressive colour, cold colours are ideal for weapons and plasma in particular because the human eye percieves intense light as being slightly blue, so tinting something slightly blue in game makes it look brighter, and I can't see how you can do that for the NF if you're having team colours. The other issue I think which may be more obvious is that the NF will then end up with fluorescent pink cannon shells, which I don't think will help their credibility as they already have pink tanks. Instead, I propose that the BE get the big blue plasma balls, while the NF get bigger rocket flares in yellow. It's still pyrotechnic and it's still team specific, I just think it looks better than blue and pink plasma. It also keeps more with the fiction and adds to asymmetry without causing gameplay issues.
