This idea has been tossing in my mind for a while now, and it's fixed-up enough to put here.

The idea is to remove the explosive aspect from the grenade launcher, and turn it into something like a flare. Not emiting light, but rather burning so intensely it cleanses the area quite nicely of kharaa buildings, but not the kharaa players themselves... Usually. To be honest, i think that the Grenade launcher has fallen from it's purpose of killing off buildings quickly to killing off buildings quickly and aliens too easilly. A marine can launch some grenades at his feet and be bathed in a semi-warm forcefield of high-explosive detonations. A nade can be shot at a leading skulk and wipe out all the other skulks behind him.

The idea of changing from a explosive effect to a burning effect would change all that. The GL maintains it's ammo count of 4, as well as it's fire rates, max ammo, etc. However, the way the grenade acts changes entirely, shifting the purpose of the weapon from the "skulk, gorge, lerk, and building pwner" to "building pwner" and keeps it there.

When shot, the grenade - now a flare - will not activate for 5 or so seconds. Once activated, it exists for only 20 seconds. Durring those 20 seconds, it does a powerful 400 damage; 20 damage per second. However, the radius which it effects is just big enough to cover a standard vent snugly; and this is all that is required to destroy buildings.

You fire at a enemy building.
The flare bounces abit and lands by the building.
The flare activates and burns the building to hell with it's 400 damage.
You continue on your building-pwning march.

If it isn't good enough then this:
A upgrade can be made for the grenade launcher at the advanced armory for a meager 15 res to make the flare stick to a enemy or enemy building, wether or not the flare is active. Not explode on contact, but STICK to the enemy. This means that if you can get a flare to stick to a skulk, he'll die in... 6 or so seconds. But he WILL die, rest assured. As well, if the flare hits a hive, it will always stick to the hive; it just wont stick to the other chambers. Multiple flares can stick to one alien and building, to a max of 4 (the entire magazine of the launcher) However, while the grenade is stuck to the alien the flare will live out the rest of it's life, until the enemy dies and drops the flare. Of course, at this point another alien can run over it and get himself owned too... and it will continue to do damage to your friendly's armor.

Oh, i forgot to mention that the flare will do half it's damage to a friendly's armor, until that friendly moves outside of half the damage radius. For example, if the radius was 64 units, then the marine would have to move 33 units AWAY from the flare (thus outside half the flare's damage radius) to stop getting his armor damaged by 10 every second. However, with such a small radius it shouldn't be a problem to dodge and pass by. Flame thrower? Bah, send a flare through the vent and it'll work all the same.

As well, the grenade would have reduced damage against both fades and onii, by 50% (200 max damage - still significant for the fade) and 75% (100 max damage - nothing but shruggin' off.) respectively. Why? upgraded HMGs are there to take the big baddies down, while shotguns are there to take out the smaller ones. LMGs are there for backup. And with this, GLs are there to clear up any road block, and take down the hive quickly.

On top of that, Hand grenades have a actual use as being the direct opposite of this "Flare" Launcher; A large explosion radius with lessened damage over all. A lethal but avoidable threat for the smaller aliens, a dangerous and impassible pathway for the larger aliens. And you can STILL spam all you like! It's just that it might not work that well.

-=You can stop reading here and reply=-
A little extra to make it all seem a bit more interesting, particle effects could be placed onto the flare to make it seem as if it's actually burning. No model changes on anything, but adding a small particle effect to the projectile would really make it noticeable. Maybe even have the alien which the grenade is attached to have the same effect placed on it, so that marines will know to avoid that alien at all costs lest the beast damage you and your allies' armor. All client-side, of course. Otherwise a simple sprite placed on the projectile/alien would work.

I like it! But, rather, I'd just make it burn the **** out of whatever it touches (aka, stick it to an onos, and it does 50 burn dmg / second for 20 seconds) but ONLY affects what it has impacted!

It's a good idead (imo) but it has a major flaw.
How do you handle stacked towers
Cause currently you are burning everything, that has contact with the ground and the stacked chambers dont have that.

And how do you kill hives
They also dont have contact with the ground.

Nah no flare I just want to light things on fire with my flame thrower.

interesting idea, but...
*vote no thank you*

PS: You know... a liquid nitrogen (or helium) thrower would be much more effective against the Kharaa than a flamethrower... Ssssh! *whisper* Don't tell the TSA that, they might win the war

*vote no*

If we wanted to roast the aliens into submission, we'd all use space heaters.

You mean all this effort to wipe out the alien menace could have been avoided if we just turned on the A/C? Boy the TSA won't be happy when we this news gets out...

I like the idea, /me votes yes.

*Likes idea*

/votes yes

This is brilliant. Not only will it clear out the problem of atmosphere: Right now the grenades are absurd, bizarre, stupid, lame, idiotic, and absurd. This would balance the game at the point where aliens can only take 1 building out at a time, where marines can clear a whole hiveroom of buildings at the same time. And the skulk wouldn't get menaced so much because even though they'd die, they wouldn't die instantly enabeling them to strike back at the GL bafore they die. Making GL not as an effective weapon against skulks and lerks. Back to the realism (And yes, both realism and gameplay can infact both be improved at the same time), the current grenades would never be used in a spaceship wished to preserve, and in this situation nanites is not an explanation. Burning flares would be much more realistic.

If they want to preserve the installations why do they then stuff mega high super nuclear grenade launchers in there?

DoT is not an excuse to make a weapon abusrdly overpowered, my friend. 2 GLs = 8 "flares". If each flare burns for 400 damage, that means two GLs shooting off one clip onto the hive would do 3,200(!) damage over the next 20 seconds. Three would cause 4,800. Four would cause 6,400. But wait. The hive only has 6,000 hp. So, if the marine commander gave four marines jetpacks and GLs, and they all got ONE CLIP into the hive before they died, then the hive would die and there would be virtually nothing the aliens could do about it except heal with a ton of gorges and hope. But wait. The flares do proximity damage. So gorges couldn't heal the hive without being fried. So in reality, the aliens could do absolutly nothing and then watch their hive fall apart. That would be 1.04's jetpacking situation all over again, and we don't want that.

I like the damage over time flare idea.

However 20 seconds is a long time - it should deal that 400 in 10 seconds or less. 20 damage (50% of 40 blast dmg) per second still isn't that lethal to skulks.

What about lerks? The primary counter to lerks is grenade launchers. Turning them into flares eliminates that role. They need to remain just as effective against lerks.

Stickiness sounds like a good idea, but I think it will be hard to implement flares that stick to moving targets (i.e. alien lifeforms). Nevertheless it's good for areas with sky-high hives.

<3

especially if they made it look purdy

[edit] oh jesus christ i wasted my 1337th post with this ****..... [/edit]

I agree that right now the grenade launcher is completely and utterly demented, but I don't think that completely destroying the GL as it is now so that it launches space heaters in a can is a very good solution. Also, what is this nonsense about "sticking" to whatever you shoot at? This would ruin any onos's day, as it has ridiculous amouts of damage that can't be avoided because you have a huge branding iron stuck to your rear. Four marines with flare launchers + full clip + healthy medspam from the commander = dead anything.

its a long post, not sure if i understood it correctly.

basically - its the grenade laucnher only, instead of the grenade blowing up and dealing 400 damage instantly- the grenade instead detonates and burns dealing 60 damage per second till it reaches 400 (6-7 seconds of burning) ?

I would like that

or did i get it completely wrong?

I'm not sure if this is the solution to nadespam, but it sure sounds cool.

I can just imagine a flare gun rush on a hive. Aliens walk into hive room to find their hive glowing like a bug-zapper. You could have some pretty sweet effects with this too.

umm then you must not be playing ont he right servers. I get half of my lerk kills with GLs. Think about how many times a lerk has hid in a vent and gassed your marines to death while your marines don't have JPs yet to chase it? Marines need a way to deal indrect damage ot lifeforms, and the GL is the only thing they have. My god..if GLs become flare guns, they better only cost like 8 res each and don't require an adv armory. A GL is part of the marine end-game tech, and should not be nerfed. I mean, how about if we nerf Onos so gore doesn't hurt marines, but only buildings? Hell, we might as well give Onos Bilebomb (which is not a bad idea in my opinion).

I vote no on this idea. GLs are not used enough as it is (shotguns can do the job of a GL better anyways, with the exception of killing a lerk in a vent). Nerf it some more and they'll never be used.

What does DoT stand for anyways?

Damage over Time

Vote yes.
I never liked grenade launchers the way they are now, they are not specialist weapons, any noob can spam a hallway.
And besides, we will always have hand grenades if you like explody stuff.

i vote yes on a change to the gls, but the overal "flare" idea, i dont really like it all that much... how does something AoE burning, not damage creatures? i think its on a good track, just kind of quirky. but, i dont think its the worst idea ever, like many people already stated =P

ive always wanted to see a reduction in gl damage, and the ability to switch whether or not they fire on a timer, or fire on contact.. but, that wont happen because then the gl would have an alt fire, and well, we know that cant be.

I did a little test in my own server with sv_cheats 1:

Test 1: It takes 6 seconds to fire 6 grenades

Test 2: It took me (1 person) 24 nades to kill the hive. That means it takes 6 nades each for 4 persons to kill a hive.

Conclusion: It takes 6 seconds for 4 persons with GLs to kill a hive.
it takes 20 Seconds for 4 persons with FlareGLs to kill a hive.

---
I am pro flares, because right now the GL is in my eyes total cheese against building and minor forms. I'm not saying i only want flares, I just want a minorized GL than the one right now.

And it's nearly impossible for 4 people with GLs to get into a hive. A GL is a very inconvenient weapon, and for every marine with a GL you need another marine with a SG or HMG to defend him. And GLs are generally hard to aim if you're not standing stock still. Strafing and bouncing around while shooting tends to make your grenades bounce off in odd directions and miss the hive. And the splash damage will kill you if you're not a long way from the hive, so you can't just run up to the hive and plow away. And in the 3-4 seconds that you spend reloading, you're an easy kill for an anemic gorge. And if you switch to pistol to defend yourself, you now have to start reloading all over again. GL is not overpowered, or you would see mass GL rushes all the time.

Editt: Spellling

However, I'm not opposed to ideas about changing the GL...

So I'll move this so the discussion can continue without me.

But wait, won't that make it more useless rather than more balanced? Maybe 10 seconds would be better. One second is forever in NS, after all.

I lub this idea.

I respectfully disagree with your idea. Grenade launcher is fine, and really it's supposed to kill lesser lifeforms.

Says who? You? Are you the expert on NS? GL is part of the marine's highest tech. It needs to at least be able to do what marine low-end tech can do (the shotgun can kill buildings just as well, AND can deal with lesser lifeforms very well). If grenade launchers shouldn't hurt lower lifeforms, then it better damn near instagib some structures.