Suggestion: bring back xCom-style "light grenades"

[walkercolt44]

Sorry if somebody else has brought this up, but can the "illumination grenade" be brought back into the game? (I'm playing 2.2.1, BTW)

In XCOM, every soldier I had was equipped with two of the things, and in night missions the first job was to spread those things ahead of the squad, then pick up and throw again when that area was cleared.  It's a great little tactical device, made night missions fairly simple to work with. I'd love to see the device included in UFOAI.

[Destructavator]

This has not yet been implemented, although it appears to have been suggested:

http://ufoai.ninex.info/wiki/index.php/Equipment/Misc/Flare

Also suggested are implementing the IR goggles.

I know these will probably be coded at some point, although honestly I'm not sure if anyone is working on that part of the code at the moment - many parts of the game are under heavy development, but there are quite a few things on the TODO list as I understand it.

BTW, welcome to the forum, and if you have any programming skills (or skills/spare time to contribute), feel free to offer help, even if it's just bug-testing.  We have development builds for the next release:

http://ufoai.ninex.info/forum/index.php?topic=2830.0

The dev builds aren't finished, but already have many new features, although you would have to tolerate bugs here and there.

At the time of this post, I think the latest link is on page 3 of that thread.

[walkercolt44]

Thanks for the welcome!

I have programming skills, and would love to help, when I have the time - right at this point even finding .5 hours in a day is not easy.  I've been a software developer for over 20 years now, primarily in embedded firmware, but have done a fair amount of applications work.

As far as the lights go, given the disadvantages of the IR goggles (limits visual angles, can't tell human from alien signature), I would think having the throwable/reusable lights would be of great added utility in a fight; an obvious low-tech tool to avoid limiting vision and for confirming IR signatures, in exchange for a few TU's to throw the thing.  They sure came in handy in XCOM, that's for sure.

[pielroja]

I think the same. Tactically, the "illumination grenade" is attractive enough to deserve its implementation at some point.

Anyway, it can be complemented with the use of night vision googles. The most modern devices (Panoramic Night Vision Goggles, PNVGs) have increased the typical field of vision (around 40 degrees) to 90 degrees, which makes them quite more useful. The US Air Department already adquires some PNVGs models for night special operations (mainly for pilots, but also for ground soldiers). Regarding to the in-game implementation, in real life night vision googles have a detection range and a shorter recognition range (sorry I don`t have detailed info). I suppose that the considerations about how to make them work should mainly rely on the coders.