Chaff Grenade

[frank]

dont know if any of you played Metal gear solid.... but i tought it would be cool to see this....

 

it would decrease stats(mouvement or accuracy) on robotic unit like (cyberdisk) then later on the game when you fight against (sectopod) they have some resistance to this weapon, would still work but not much.

 

or the robotic unit just cant move but still can shoot.

 

and maybe later in game aliens can use that weapon for ur tank?

[JakeDrake]

Hey great idea! Although there are some alternatives to simply just restricting movement.

 

Scenario:

Terrordisk is holding off the squad from inside a house, anyone walking in doesnt have the reaction to take him out. Luckily someone brought along a chaff grenade! woo! He takes up position to the side of a window, where the enemy can't see him, primes his chaff, and tosses it in expertly. The chaff explodes with the same blast radius as a frag grenade, but no damage is done and the area hit looks like it is enclosed in yellow smoke. Rookie takes point at the door and walks through and stares straight at the Terrordisk about 15 feet away; rookie pees his pants but Terrordisk does not react. Rookie teases the enemy and it does nothing, he walks up and kicks it and it blasts him in the face . A more knowledgeable seargent keeps his distance and takes an aimed shot with his las rifle (to the eye if hes smart) and destroys the Terrodisk. Fortunately it does NOT self destruct due to the chaff intruding on its mechanics. The seargent whips out his <medikit> and attempts to heal the rookie. What? darn thing won't work, DUH the chaff. Seargent picks him up takes him outside to heal him. End Scenario

 

The chaff grenade here affects the mechanical enemy by reducing his perception range to only a few feet in front of him, ensuring that anyone can take him out. However it could be possible for the Terrodisk to take some panic shots after being shot at (probably could prgram this as a simple panic because Terrodisks are then experiencing something similar to complete electrical failure). Any other electrical devices will not work in the chaff, such as <medikits> <Scanners> laser weapons <Flying Suits>, etc. Also because of this a Terrodisk does not self destruct, giving the chaff a secondary use besides survival, capturing the dangerous terrordisk. The "yellow smoke" is simply some sort of graphical effect that allows the player to know exactly where the chaff is taking effect. I imagine the chaff might last for less than smoke.

 

Another option for the effects a chaff is that is renders the unit completely crazy and it just continues to panic, shooting and running around, until it ends its turn outside of a chaff area.

 

The last thing I can think of is that the chaff could reduce movement range and firing accuracy to almost nil. Causing the unit to move very slow (INCLUDING FLYING SUITS) and have a very very low chance to hit something.

 

I like the first option the best as the AI could just continue normally just with severe negative modifiers on its stats (we could assume that the enemy doesnt KNOW he is being chaffed?)

 

Oh well, I like the idea.

Edited January 28, 2005 by JakeDrake

[Snakeman]

What would this do to soldiers wearing the Personal Armor equivalent? Are these guys (personal armored on up) taking armor damage or is it simply a temporary movement penalty (chunks clogging up the motor mechanisms to suit joints) within the confines of the yellow cloud only?

 

Serves them right I guess if they didn't have any of those directional shaped charges (claymores?).

 

The only thing I'm uncertain on are the temporary status of the various damages. In my view, using such an explosive, especially if its wide dispersal in effect - hindering you and the enemy, the effects shouldn't be temporary (not for the player, but for the sake of balance, definitely temporary to alien war machinery). Although I will say that this type of action sort of gives an argument for a field repair kit (not unlike medkits) to be used to revive a piece of equipment to restore its usefulness.

 

Sorry to get too far off topic with this, but because I like the effects described in your scenario Drake (minus the temporary stuff to the player's units), I thought it would be a good time to discuss this kit, since it does relate to your balance concerns...

 

The repair kit screen could look like the outline of the soldier just like the medkit screen, only its highlighting the weapons affected by this explosive's action (or some other type of weapon/action that had caused it) in whichever inventory slot its residing on (would probably recommend that the soldier be facing the field kit guy plus have the damanged weapon in one handslot). Weapons could be red as hurt body parts are for the medkit screen. Options off the top of my head for such a kit can be (obviously) Repair, and a second one could be Salvage (will explain this later) and perhaps something like Hacking/Hotwiring (for doors in alien ships, computers etc).

 

Likewise hit points (equivalent to HP in soldiers) could be ascribed to weapons before they become junked beyond any usefulness. As for the number of Repairs and Salvages per kit, I'd go with a lesser number for these new three field kit options (as opposed to the medkit's 10 painkiller, 10 heal, 10 stimulants), maybe like half of that for these kits.

 

Scenarios where I'd find a kit useful, are any instance where you have a unit of yours who'd gone down but you can still grab his/her stuff. Their stuff could need to be repaired if they had died in an explosion (including stun blasts from small launchers).

 

Another battlefield situation could be that, while finding out that the corpse of your rocket or cannon tank is unusable, you find a piece of unexploded ordinance you could use as an ad-hoc proximity grenade (stash it under an alien corpse - assuming aliens would check their own dead or even yours for "stuff" to use against you too). This action would need to use the Hotwiring option in the kit, plus perhaps some repair points to pull off. Since the corpse of the tank is unuseable, the Salvage option isn't open to you.

 

The Salvage option on any large piece of machinery should be dermined by how many hit points the thing had suffered, otherwise its junked (fell below the repair hit point threshold). The only time you can use something that was unsalvagable is if on its corpse some part or other on it could be used by any other of the kit's options as described for some other battlescape action.

 

Naturally, a special note to the kit's usefulness at all on anything is that those things would have had to have been researched (i.e. to fix laser rifle it has to have been researched/able to be built by you).