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« on: August 29, 2014, 04:40:08 pm »
Did some sums, and Taking a flashbang from belt and lobbing it takes 8 TU's. Did some testing in skirmish mode, and in around 50 flashbang lobs at Taman armed with everything from pistols up to particle rifles I never got a single instance of reaction fire back, either the instant before my trooper threw the flashbang, or after it was lobbed. It was also pretty clear that if an alien had saved some TU's (not the easiest thing to determine unless you can observe thier entire move), the flashbang wiped the reserved TU's out. I did not expect to get any fire after the lob, but expected to get some fire before the lob, just as how reaction fire occurs before you shoot at an alien. Could this be down do how events are queued up and executed within a turn? Things seemed very, very similar for 25 tests on Ortnoks.
Repeated with about 25 attempts at a Sheevar, and things were inconclusive. I never had any reaction fire returned at me by expending the 8 TU's in the equipping and throwing of a flashbang, but as above it was hard to tell if the alien had used all its TU's or not. In any case, the Sheevar appeared to have a standard amount of TU's the turn following being exposed to a flashbang. Tests with Bloodspiders and Hovernets showed a similar pattern the the Sheevar, as supported by the .ufo file info above. I am not 100% sure that relates to flashbang though, and could be related to the electrolaser, most possibly how much resistance each has to electrical damage.
Of course, the easiest thing to do would be to play as Sheevar and have flashbangs thrown at me, but the AI was reluctant to do that. Lobbing them at my own alien troops did nothing, unsurprisingly.