Grenades

[Korbo]

Two points on grenades

1. Disruptor grenades are overpowered. I know it's intentionally so, much like Bolas letting you just murder Widowmaker effortlessly while playing a cripple with the combined martial prowess of Gandhi and Helen Keller, but it still feels... cheap. There's no real way to resist them (except for few enemies who have high charisma and a tiny amount of resistance), and the only consideration when using them is 'Do I want to waste this resource', which feels far less interesting than the amount of tactical consideration you put into with other grenades.

Combining the AP loss, damage over time, evasion reduction - you're basically putting a large square of enemies out of the fight, dealing significant damage to them over time, and removing their evasion from existence - like a super gas grenade and flashbang that has no counterplay (though weaker in some aspects, no attribute damage and no hit chance reduction, I know). Panic in general feels like an overpowered effect (if something that just immediately demands you use the psiblock to protect yourself). Need to start giving the enemies tinfoil hats or something, or perhaps a way to remove or partially resist the effect at another cost (like health, or losing a turn entirely and carrying over the unspent AP, or... something). Or maybe confuse them and make them temporarily target allies for a turn or... something that isn't what they are now, which is an 'I win' button.

2. Using grenades can be very frustrating. I really love the way the game works where you're trying to figure out the best grenade to use in a specific situation (instead of just chucking three pointer Frag V's and calling it a day... or disruptor grenades, for that matter), how enemies have specific resistances you can check by looking at them... but sometimes, it can be harder than I'd like. Fixed perspective, enemy rotation, etc can make it hard to tell while looking. I'll admit I've messed this up far more than I'd like.

I'd really like if while you're in the throwing grenade prediction screen, it brings up the thermal, optical and toxin resistance stats where it'd normally display the bullet/melee/energy resistances (or just effectiveness of that grenade in place of the cover icon), to anyone who would be caught in the AoE (also helping with sometimes it not being obvious whether a given square will be caught in a grenade). I do realise this kind of dumbs it down a bit and makes it less interesting, but I feel like the exact same argument could be made for hiding enemy physical resistances and just zoom in and check if that's an old bullet proof vest they're wearing or just a damaged one - and I think we can agree that'd be silly and overkill.

Bonus challenge: How many of these fellas are going to be affected by this Mid Grade Flashbang, what penalty, and what's their toxin and thermal capability? They're facing you and I'm zoomed it, so it should be easy - right?

https://i.imgur.com/gb2IuUn.png

The top two are blinded by 55%, bottom one is unaffected, and I have no idea what their thermal and toxin capability is. You'd think it'd be obvious to see if a guy was wearing night vision goggles or something, yeah?

Please don't tell me there's some way of displaying these and I'm just an idiot complaining about nothing. Actually, do - I'd like to know if I'm missing something.

[Cununculus]

I am barely at the point of starting to understand how to use grenades.

The disruptor ones are a sort of nuclear option that seem to hurt one's own party as much as the enemy.

With a party of 4, all shields gone and Faythe and probably the MC not high on HP this always ends badly for me.

When getting a disruptor I sell them.
Are they meant to balance for single-player?

[skaudus]

I think the solution for disruptor grenades is simply tweaking the numbers on panic so that it's less powerful. It should be more powerful than a standard grenade, but not powerful enough that it can't be used against your forces without breaking balance. It's a fine line to balance.

I like the UI suggestions!

[HuggyBear]

Originally posted by Cununculus:

I am barely at the point of starting to understand how to use grenades.

The disruptor ones are a sort of nuclear option that seem to hurt one's own party as much as the enemy.

With a party of 4, all shields gone and Faythe and probably the MC not high on HP this always ends badly for me.

When getting a disruptor I sell them.
Are they meant to balance for single-player?

When you throw the Disruptor are you hitting your own party members? When you select the grenade it should show you highlighted tiles (white squares) where the grenade will impact, ideally you would want to avoid hitting your own team. It's sometimes tricky to see the impact zone though.

[Ergil]

I think he got the Disruptor and the electromagnetic pulse grenade mixed up.

[Pink Eye]

In regards to Disruptors. They can increase the mental resistance bonus you gain from INT/CHA OOOOOR give us Iron Will already. It's a DnD classic feat for a reason.

[HuggyBear]

Originally posted by Ergil:

I think he got the Disruptor and the electromagnetic pulse grenade mixed up.

Ah that makes sense, I think right now they're primarily intended for knocking out turrets, but yeah they are tricky to use without blowing up your own gadgets and implants. I'm guessing they'll have additional utility against (future) robotic and cyborg enemies as well.

[Pink Eye]

Since we're talking about pulse nades there's a couple of spots where you can throw one without it affecting your party. I don't have every single instance documented save for one:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2748991571

I usually figure these things out by pure trial and error - then end up forgetting about them the next day xd.

Additionally, there's also another place at Braxton's fight where you can throw it over a window.

[skaudus]

Pulse grenades are the ones I'd most like to see tweaked. If only for the fact that they suck at affecting their intended targets.

It depends a lot on what the devs want it to be. Currently, due to its massive aoe, it's guaranteed to affect both you and your opponents. Since your party will usually be the one with the most implants and gadgets, you'd be actively hurting yourself most of the time.

Okay, pulse grenades aren't meant for regular combat, but instead meant for robotic targets. But they're bad at doing that as well. They don't do nearly enough damage or disruption to the energy turrets for it to matter, and they would have been prime victims.

So, either keep it's massive area of effect, but significantly increase its effect against robotic enemies, or make it more selective by reducing the aoe to prevent friendly fire.

[Pink Eye]

Well, currently the enemy AI doesn't use them. I wonder how things will play out once they get tweaked to use pulse nades. I don't think I'm ready to live in a world where enemy can just turn off my implants - unless the effect affects them too.

[Pink Eye]

Also. We need GREEEAAASSSEE nades. It's the bread and butter for Knights of the Chalice and any DnD game.

[Ergil]

Originally posted by Pink Eye:

Well, currently the enemy AI doesn't use them. I wonder how things will play out once they get tweaked to use pulse nades. I don't think I'm ready to live in a world where enemy can just turn off my implants - unless the effect affects them too.

That won't be much of a comfort, since you'll rarely if ever meet anyone as cyborgy as you.

[HuggyBear]

Originally posted by Ergil:

Originally posted by Pink Eye:

Well, currently the enemy AI doesn't use them. I wonder how things will play out once they get tweaked to use pulse nades. I don't think I'm ready to live in a world where enemy can just turn off my implants - unless the effect affects them too.

That won't be much of a comfort, since you'll rarely if ever meet anyone as cyborgy as you.

I think it would be neat if there were a gang of technology rejecting humans that had no implants or gadgets and used Pulse Grenades against you, currently Con and implants are incredibly strong relative to their cost.

re: more cyborgy, ECLSS

[Pink Eye]

Samuel has a couple of implants on him. There's a two handed Juggernaut with STR implant if you choose to fight Jonas. Couple of implant users sprinkled in Arena. That's all that I remember.

[Pink Eye]

pulse nades can also shut off gadgets.

[Cununculus]

Originally posted by Ergil:

I think he got the Disruptor and the electromagnetic pulse grenade mixed up.

You are correct; apologies to all for the confusion.