Equipment/Proposed/Alien Boomerang Grenade

Description

While looking like a toy this is one of the most feared alien weapons. On first sight it looks like a orange sized ball with two wings or rotor blades attached to it. Its overall width is 35cm. They fly rotating. Although there is no visible propulsion or even steering device they are capable to evade any obstacle and track down our soldiers. As soon as it hits is target it triggers a built in plasma charge. Although it has only about half the strength of an plasma grenade the close distance to the target makes it highly dangerous.

Research

Looks like this device is propelled by its wings. They are made of a special kind of carbon nano molecules that are piezo electric. This allows the wings to swing about 3cm up and down to maintain the rotation and alter the pitch and though the direction and speed of travel.

We did not understand how its control eletronics work, but they seam to try to get into one direction even if they have to get around obsticales and be attracted by movments.

Game play

They are quite rare (may be used by only one alien race) and very difficult to get as they are deployed as soon as the aliens have an idea where their enemies could be. When thrown they try to stay on the path in one direction. If the way is blocked the try to go around obstacles - normally without changing their height. For safety they never go back for more than 3 fields. They can get as far as 20 sqares per round (test ingame!) and self destruct if they have no way out or after 4 rounds. Whenever they see an moving person/object in the 180° of their aimed direction it flyies in that direction. Enemies and friends that have spend more than 50% of their tus in the last round are treated as "moving".

Alien Boomerang Grenade are easy to spot but difficult to hit. As they don't have any armor they explode on the first hit or light blast damage.

Aliens should normaly launch serveral (2-4) of those at once.