Smoke

[Enderminion]

aren't smoke grenades smoke hot, so why can sebs see through it?

[Jerry]

Cause Chris (Lead Designer) made it that way.

[Enderminion]

thats like total BS

[SpectralShade]

Originally posted by Enderminion:

thats like total BS

there's a lot of BS in the game, to be fair.

My pet peeve: Standing one tile away from a fence that is waist high. Guy tries to throw a grenade several tiles on the other side. Fence gives a 45% block chance for the throw, ending in the grenade being on the wrong isde of the fence far too often. Seriously guys, in all of my time in the army I never saw anyone THAT bad at throwing grenades. The chance of NOT getting the grenade over that kind of fence should be near the chance of a "fumble", ie, you slip while you throw it. NOT 45%.

It's crap like that which makes me save scum to my hearts content.

Edit: Oh. and if any of my guys becomes unconciousness during mission, they don't count as killed on debriefing, but they "magically" dissapear from my roster meaning I need to get a new replacement anyway.

[IrrelevantFish]

While there is certainly a lot of BS in the game, Sebs immunity to smoke is actually 100% plausible. In fact, one the primary applications of both military and civilian thermal imaging is seeing through smoke. This works in part because even if a smoke source produces a lot of heat, that heat is quite localized. The smoke cools at a rate proportional to the square of the distance, so you don't have to get very far away before the smoke's not much hotter than the surrounding air.

Additionally, what "thermal imagers" see is a product not just of a surface's temperature but also if its "emissivity" (how much it radiates when it gets hot, a property of a surface's texture and composition) and how much of what it emits makes it to the imager (depends on its angle in relation to the imager).

In other words, if their thermal vision were sensitive/precise enough (and as a biochemist, I believe it's quite possible for a biological system to attain that degree of sensitivity/precision), a Sebillian could not only see a soldier through smoke, but tell you what kind of armor they were wearing, if it had been painted recently, and which way they were facing.

On the other hand, it's also completely possible to design smoke grenades that IR vision can't see through (already been done IRL, I believe), and that seems like one of the first things you'd do after you'd finished autopsying your first Sebillian.

[frdnwsm]

"if any of my guys becomes unconciousness during mission, they don't count as killed on debriefing, but they "magically" dissapear from my roster meaning I need to get a new replacement anyway."

This is only if they go comatose from wounds; they bleed out. If one of my guys gets controlled by the aliens, I whack him with a stun baton. When he wakes up, he's back in base.

Smoke is fairly unreliable later in the game, since not only Sebillians but Androns are unaffected. I generally stock up on flashbangs instead, at that point.

[frdnwsm]

And yeah, a 3 foot tall fence blocking a grenade throw is seriously bogus.

[Enderminion]

Originally posted by SpectralShade:

Originally posted by Enderminion:

thats like total BS

there's a lot of BS in the game, to be fair.

My pet peeve: Standing one tile away from a fence that is waist high. Guy tries to throw a grenade several tiles on the other side. Fence gives a 45% block chance for the throw, ending in the grenade being on the wrong isde of the fence far too often. Seriously guys, in all of my time in the army I never saw anyone THAT bad at throwing grenades. The chance of NOT getting the grenade over that kind of fence should be near the chance of a "fumble", ie, you slip while you throw it. NOT 45%.

It's crap like that which makes me save scum to my hearts content.

Edit: Oh. and if any of my guys becomes unconciousness during mission, they don't count as killed on debriefing, but they "magically" dissapear from my roster meaning I need to get a new replacement anyway.

for me, nades with a 45% to hit, hit more often then a MAG rifle with 60% to hit

[frdnwsm]

" nades with a 45% to hit, hit more often then a MAG rifle with 60% to hit"

OK, there are two different machanisms at work here. The grenade percent chance is the chance to land near where you are aiming; the projectile weapon is the chance to hit the target with a shot. If the grenade gets over the obstacle, the target gets hit aurtomatically since it is an AOE weapon. If it doesn't, the thrower, or an ally, can get hit by the explosion. The projectile/energy weapon is harder to master but doesn't have a chance of a blocked shot bouncing back at you.

Considering how many TUs it takes to get a grenade out and throw it, it should never NOT clear a low obstacle. Your guys should have better aim than that, even fresh out of basic training! I call Shenanigans!

[SpectralShade]

Originally posted by frdnwsm:

"if any of my guys becomes unconciousness during mission, they don't count as killed on debriefing, but they "magically" dissapear from my roster meaning I need to get a new replacement anyway."

This is only if they go comatose from wounds; they bleed out. If one of my guys gets controlled by the aliens, I whack him with a stun baton. When he wakes up, he's back in base.

Smoke is fairly unreliable later in the game, since not only Sebillians but Androns are unaffected. I generally stock up on flashbangs instead, at that point.

It happens if one of my guys go down to a stun grenade. No bleeding or real wounds involved.

Yeah, wonder why I am pissed at grenades going random places ;)

[frdnwsm]

"It happens if one of my guys go down to a stun grenade. No bleeding or real wounds involved."

Really? Your guys don't recover at base when stunned? Is that only with a stun grenade? Have you tried experimenting with a stun baton and seeing how that works? It sounds like there might be a bug with stun grenades then. Perhaps stun grenades are treated like regular grenades, and if your guy goes down the game considers him as dead.

I have never used a stun grenade on a mind controlled trooper. My soldiers seem more resistant to stun batons than the aliens themselves, I usually need 4 or 5 hits to take my guy down. Possibly this is due to the fact that the batons are tuned to the metabolism of the aliens, and not humans. So I just have the two or three nearest soldiers get their baton out and start whacking away till he falls over.

[SpectralShade]

Originally posted by frdnwsm:

"It happens if one of my guys go down to a stun grenade. No bleeding or real wounds involved."

Really? Your guys don't recover at base when stunned? Is that only with a stun grenade? Have you tried experimenting with a stun baton and seeing how that works? It sounds like there might be a bug with stun grenades then. Perhaps stun grenades are treated like regular grenades, and if your guy goes down the game considers him as dead.

I have never used a stun grenade on a mind controlled trooper. My soldiers seem more resistant to stun batons than the aliens themselves, I usually need 4 or 5 hits to take my guy down. Possibly this is due to the fact that the batons are tuned to the metabolism of the aliens, and not humans. So I just have the two or three nearest soldiers get their baton out and start whacking away till he falls over.

Happened twice now. First time I didn't spot it at first and I was left wondering why I suddenly surplus of some gear and minus one trooper that used to use that gear when I was about to send a team out. I could spot who it was because it was a role I only had 2 guys of prior to it happening, and could thus remember what had happened. I had to hire a new recruit, though, as I had overwritten the old save where the guy was still existing, though.

Second time, the first thing I did after the valkyrie had landed was to check my roster before I saved the game. Sure enough, the guy that had been stunned by my own grenade and had been listed as surviving at debreif was no-where to be found anymore.

Now I just reload straigth away if one of my guys gets stunned because of this.

Btw, they weren't mind controlled. Just sloppy throwing by my guys that caused grenades to land literally at their own feet.