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Author Topic: New Grenade Launcher round.  (Read 2323 times)

Offline jerm

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New Grenade Launcher round.
« on: June 21, 2011, 12:36:31 pm »
I seriously spent 10 minutes wondering whether to put this post in Feature Requests or Design. But since there's other weapon suggestions here, I will put this here.

I basically want to suggest a napalm/incendiary round for the GL as a form of area denial. While mucking around release 2.3.1, I noticed walking into or ending your turn near flaming wreakage HURTS (well, my dude was unarmored at the time). And I figured since there's already coding for fire in the game, it wouldn't be that far of a stretch to code in player created flames. To balance it, maybe set a turn limit to how long it persists. I'd say 5-6 rounds is plenty.
 
The second part might be a little more difficult, burning actors (or character). Allowing flames pass from inanimate tiles/objects to pass ONTO an actor. Basically, walking into a flaming wreakage/napalm and walk back out a flaming torch. Which, if the actor survives long enough, is also passable to other actors. (Imagine a burning armored Ortnok charging your guys)

Now, to justify such a weapon. While I understand PhalanX is primarily a "secret" organization, I would assume it adheres to many unorthodox "as-long-as-it-kills-aliens" combat doctrines. And area denial IS a viable tactical consideration. A damage-over-time effect would be the next best thing since there's no such thing as suppressive fire in UFO:AI (i.e - force enemy combatants to remain in cover with liberal cover fire).


Offline geever

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Re: New Grenade Launcher round.
« Reply #1 on: June 21, 2011, 02:10:59 pm »
I basically want to suggest a napalm/incendiary round for the GL as a form of area denial.

It is planned. Actually we have incendiary ammo for the Grenade Launcher, the Rocket Launcher, and as hand grenade. BUT they're disabled (and will be disabled in 2.4 too) because the code needed for it is missing (to hold the flame effect for more turns, to make it expand, to make it hurt).

The second part might be a little more difficult, burning actors (or character).

I'm not sure about this one. Probably we don't want it. Anyway first the problems mentioned above needs to be solved.

-geever

Offline jerm

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Re: New Grenade Launcher round.
« Reply #2 on: June 22, 2011, 03:01:15 am »
because the code needed for it is missing (to hold the flame effect for more turns, to make it expand, to make it hurt).

Oh, I had thought that such a code already existed - at least partially - since approaching flaming wrecks actually cause damage. Is that a tile property instead of an "object" effect? I'm a coding scrub so forgive me if I'm talking nonsense here.

Offline TallTroll

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Re: New Grenade Launcher round.
« Reply #3 on: June 23, 2011, 05:18:53 pm »
I think it's to do with the engine. A lot of the map stuff is set at spawn, and is pretty much unchangeable aftwerwards. That's why there's no destructible terrain, for instance, even though logic dictates that slamming a rocket into some of the thinner walls ought to be a good way to manufacture new breaches.

I suspect fire effects are set up at the same time, so they can be there, or not there, but it's hard to add them during the game. Or, for that matter, to put them out, if there were a fire extinguisher equipment