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Thoughts on Smoke Grenades in 19 SC


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I love smoke grenades.

Let me say that again, I LOVE smoke grenades.

However with the recent changes I think they feel a bit too gimmicky and granted I havent had a bunch of time to test them, it seems like you could REALLY exploit them now.

Previously they seemed to work by reducing per tile the Alien's Accuracy...and if it was low enough they simply wouldnt fire at you.

This however required 1-2 smoke grenades and being at long range.

If you tried to use a smoke to protect yourself in close range it didnt work too well...you needed distance (Reduces accuracy) and a bunch of smoke tiles between you and the Alien (further reduced accuracy).

The only problem with them was that they didnt do anything to reaction shots.

The new ones block Line of Sight (LOS) and thus reaction shots, and maybe it was dumb luck but I was able to have the door open in a small scout and all of my soldiers in that tiny room with 2 Caesans and spent 2-3 turns without being shot at or reaction fire being used.

It seems to create a situation of you "know" where the Aliens are and you can just force fire at that tile and it seems to be effective at killing them, although accuracy suffers.

I assume this is designed around allowing you to use them to create a safer close ranged combat environment.

Personally I think having an accuracy modifier per tile, and a reaction fire modifier per tile would be better though.

So if you kept your distance and used 1-2 depending on the Alien's Stats/type you could greatly reduce the Alien's accuracy and their reflex skill so they would have a much smaller chance to reaction fire.

However they WOULD still take shots, but they couldnt hit the broad side of a barn through smoke, and they COULD take a reaction shot, but their reflex skill would be greatly penalized making it occur much less often...not to mention their accuracy with said reaction shot would be diminished.

Being 2 tiles away and not being shot at just seems a little cheesy and ripe for exploitation, there ARE pros and cons for both versions but...

I still have to play test them some more (Been busy the last two weeks, and didnt try 19-7 because they were bugged) so for me the jury is still out.

What are your thoughts so far with 19 SC?

Edited by Mytheos
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I agree w/ Mytheos. I've been able to use smoke grenades to save soldiers that should've died. I feel they were better before the change. At least with the old way, aliens would burst fire into the smoke (which makes sense).

This is a case where the way the OG X-Com did it was non-ideal, and xenonauts had improved upon it.

Radius and longevity reductions in the 19.1 stable didn't solve the exploitable nature of smoke as they are now. I used to think otherwise, but with how many soldiers I can render immune to dmg= there's a problem. At leas the AI should estimate your position and fire into the smoke, with combat ranks being better at it.

If they are meant to make close-range combat safer= not realistic IMO. That's the role of flashbangs and shotguns, which should be examined.

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I've been thinking about this for a while and actually, I think I agree.

I, too, really like smoke grenades. I use them all the time and they constantly save my soldiers lives. But I think that's the problem. They're really very good. Where I need to, I have spammed smoke to enter dangerous parts of a UFO/base and been immune to attack, save for when occasionally the aliens fire anyway (which I think is a bug, since they shouldn't have LOS; this was before 19.1SC though so might now be fixed). As such, since I started 19.1SC my causality rate has plummeted.

I'm wondering whether they don't need to reduce, rather than completely obstruct, LOS and apply an accuracy penalty on top of that. That way, seeing through a whole cloud of smoke would be impossible, but shooting at someone part way inside it or from a few tiles away wouldn't be impossible.

(As an aside, I note in the 19.1SC fixes that firing through smoke is supposed to nerf accuracy entirely. This is true on the UI, but I've taken shots through smoke and still got hits on 0%/1% shots. Might have to test, but I have a feeling this still isn't fixed).

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It could be that GJ will adapt the AI to the smoke grenades, rather than needing to adapt the smoke grenades to the current AI that was designed around the previous smoke grenades.

It'd be great if that's the case. I think part of the problem is that often the aliens - unable to see anything - will just wander around aimlessly. Sometimes, they actually walk right by my soldiers and could have spotted them, but because they're already moving to a specified point they don't stop and shoot. Having a "search smoke" routine for the AI would be great.

Also, smoke definitely isn't giving the accuracy penalty properly still. A few tests have just shown plenty of 0% chance hits.

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Just a side note, but I honestly believe you could take smoke grenades out of the game and only 10-20 people would notice.

Seriously.

I cant even understand how you can even play this game without using smoke grenades, obviously its just me and 10 other people but.../shrug

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I cant even understand how you can even play this game without using smoke grenades

I find it telling that in my present game, up to two months in, I'll throw *every mission* more smoke grenades then I have frags and their equivalents *the entire playthrough*. I'm sure in a few decades time my retired soldiers will be taking legal action against Xenonauts to help pay for their lung-cancer treatment caused by vast amounts of smoke inhalation. (And I will remind them that it's better than being a sticky charred mess all over the asphalt, which was probably the alternative).

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I've been using Smoke Grenades relgiously since 19.7 (every soldier type except rocketeer brings 4). They're too powerful NOT to use. Once Stun Weapons are researched, I have a Stunner class that just has a stun baton and smoke/stun grenades:

1. Toss Smoke

2. Run as far into smoke as is safe

3. Repeat 1 and 2 until close to alien(s)

4. Beat alien(s) about the head and face

5. Profit!

As far as game balance goes, this may not be what true X-com fans want (I didn't hear about the originals until EU came out last year), but it's a lot of fun for me. However, if it gets rebalanced again, I'll adapt to whatever the change is. Guaranteed safety certainly seems a bit OP.

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I wasn't even counting the other two. My top three starting grenades are those, but overall they're in my top five, along with the electroshock and the stun. Top five, my favorite grenades, very much so, yes. ;)
Have you had the game crash when tossing stun grenades into an area with a smoke screen? I've reported it. Bascially, throwing stuns blindly into smoke where you think an alien is seems to crash the game for me.
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