Smoke inhalation?

[Dr. LoveStrange]

Let me preface this by saying I am a big fan of these games, so this is coming from a place of love in a hope to improve the finished product. That said, when deciding to include or cut content, I think the question that's most important is does the content under consideration make the game more fun? And interesting challenges are fun. But the first time I walked into smoke from a smoke grenade that I just tossed only to see the stun damage message pop up wasn't only NOT fun, it was annoying. Why? Because I had fully anticipated taking stun damage if I spent enough time in the smoke (ie; ended a soldiers turn in a smokey tile), but I wasn't expecting it to happen IMMEDIATELY on entering the tile. Is that how it worked in the original XCOM game? I don't think so - but even if it was, than that was a bad design choice - not everything from that game was perfect, and not everything was ported into these games. Even if it was like that in the original, it's an odd choice IMO to bring THAT over to this one.

Setting aside whether or not the entire mechanic is flawed and just focusing on the immediacy of it - why can't my soldiers hold their breath during the 4 TU's of time it takes to pass through that tile? Even if its a few tiles, its still just maybe 20-30% of an average soldier's turn, and therefore a period of seconds. Not minutes. Is the message 'always remember to put your breather module on before briefly passing through your own smoke grenade cover?' Because that's a gimmicky way to add challenge, and it feels beneath such an otherwise clever game like this. If it was an interesting challenge, then it'd be cool - but how is it interesting? It's a boolean value, a simple checkbox - bring a breather module and forget about the issue for the rest of the game. It's not a puzzle that has to be navigated in novel and interesting ways every mission, it's a one time 'oh... really? Fine, whatever.'

The physiology of smoke inhalation isn't that fast, so if it was added/ported over for realism then that's a poor choice as well. Very few things outside action potential propagation along nerves are THAT fast when it comes to human physiology. A stun baton doing immediate stun damage makes perfect sense. Shocks disrupt action potential propagation. Everything else would take longer - heck, if we're going for REAL realism then even hemorrhagic shock effects should take longer, which would mean that immediate deaths would be a lot less common and the more common thing would be delayed deaths. Maybe a gradual reduction in TUs to 0 after being mortally wounded - maybe just one turn or half a turn if they were shot in the heart or their aorta was severed, but the only instant deaths would be from getting shot in the head or neck. But it's a game, realism isn't everything. To the extent that 'realism' was the reason for this games smoke inhalation mechanic, it's worth noting that the bulk of smoke inhalation issues happen from ~15 minutes to 24 hours after the fact; the only symptoms that can be more acute than that would be due to carbon monoxide (CO) poisoning, but even that takes at LEAST a minute, usually longer. And they wouldn't happen at all to someone briefly running through some smoke, especially if they were holding their breath. CO doesn't absorb through your skin, it's only a problem when it reaches our aveoli.

Just my 2 cents. I've got other notes but I've got a 1 issue per post rule lol. Love the new strategic elements, BTW. Looking forward to seeing how it evolves.

PS: since it's a post-script, it's not violating my rule lol - another thing that would be AWESOME would be if the game were made a bit more mod friendly - not necessarily with modding tools, but maybe just abstracting a the numbers used in the game's mechanics (damages, ranges, etc) into 'ini' files or JSON or something easy to read and alter. Modding communities dramatically extend the lifespan of games, so they're good for everyone - I know its possible to make changes now, but it's a bit unwieldy to do so, and easy to screw up something important. Just a thought!

[Mediocre Ned]

Look man, smoke stun isn't that hard to deal with even without bring gas masks. Even with the weak stats at the beginning your troops will be fine crossing through a full smoke grenade and staying in it for at least a full turn. As well it slowly decays for each turn and you can remove it entirely if you use a medkit. Which becomes trivial once you get automed module upgrade, you will never have to worry about stun again as it wipes it out at the end of each turn.

And if you really hate how smoke works you are going to REALLY hate the poison grenades. As they take 10 health for each step.

[Gamerzilla]

There is a cheap gas mask to make you immune, and many lategame armors give you gas immunity. As mentioned above, its barely noticeable even without those.