Hevy Launcher Grenade Specialization

[Goldminermac]

The HEVY launcher is in a bit of a weird place right now. It can’t do anything standard grenades can’t despite requiring you to specialize a whole soldier into it, it requires line of sight instead of firing in an arc, and to add insult to injury, when fired at ranges beyond a standard grenade it has accuracy so poor it is almost unusable in any serious situation. Here are my suggestions to rework it into proper weapon to build a role around.

 

IDEA ONE: Make it an upgrade to grenades

Grenades in this game are immensely powerful, and their strength comes from extremely high accuracy and therefore reliability, and not requiring line of sight. As is the HEVY launcher removes both of those factors in exchange for a dubiously useful range increase. As the role that uses it is titled grenadier, a good way to rework the launcher would be to market it as a straight upgrade to grenades, at the expense of having it replace a soldier’s primary weapon. The launcher should fire in an arc, allowing it to surpass obstacles, and maintain good accuracy at longer range than thrown grenades. This way using the launcher is the same as throwing grenades, but is effective for a much farther distance, removing the need to get a soldier up close to enemies to use grenades offensively and adding strategic use for specialized grenadiers. While the main downside from this is needing to have a soldier dedicated to only being effective at using grenades, grenades are still very powerful and it could be further balanced by keeping the high 51% TU cost grenades normally have instead of the flat one currently used, as the range buff is a significant boon.

 

IDEA TWO: Ammunition Variety

The HEVY launcher just does smoke and terrain destruction, both roles fulfilled by smoke and demolition charge grenades as is. A good improvement would be to add a larger variety of ammunition types, possibly filling niches not met by grenades and others that are.

-Anti Personnel Rounds: Basically a frag grenade round, maybe with a larger blast radius even though that buff may not be necessary. A way to deal proper damage with the launcher.

-Shock Rounds: A flashbang that also deals stun damage along with suppressing enemies. A reliable way to stun enemies and a good source of suppression from long range alongside the machine gun, and an anti robot weapon.

-Stun Gas Rounds: Creates a colored smoke cloud that blocks line of sight and deals much more stun damage from inhalation than smoke normally does. Another way to catch enemies alive and should be unique to the launcher without a grenade equivalent, possibly requiring a research to unlock.

-Corrosive Gas Rounds: Creates a colored cloud of smoke that blocks line of sight and deals heavy damage to any units and terrain within. Could be used as a long term area denial tool still capable of damaging enemies who don’t breath smoke like cleaner soldiers or robots, at the expense of being equally dangerous to your soldiers and obliterating items and corpses. Should also be unique to the launcher and not available as a grenade, maybe needing a research to unlock.

[Raffik]

38 minutes ago, Goldminermac said:

IDEA ONE: Make it an upgrade to grenades

I dont know about the upgrade. 

Agree with you, that hand grenades are very powerful and that the HEVY should fire in an arc at a greater distance (20 tiles). However, the fixed TU cost per shot is a benefit, allowing more experienced soldiers fire 3 rounds in a turn, which you can't do with any other primary weapon (except pistols) or grenades.

For direct fire I'd love to see the rocket launcher.

41 minutes ago, Goldminermac said:

IDEA TWO: Ammunition Variety

Agree.

For close range anti-personnel usage I'd love to see buckshot/flechette rounds, similar in function to shotgun, which would make the grenadier more versatile.