Too often do I see the Grenade Launcher, a high damage, large radius explosive weapon be used foolishly by pro and newb alike. Spam spam spam, regardless of where you are. I began thinking today after a match in a small hive area where 3 skulks, a lerk, and a fade, all with VERY good skill, could not kill one skills gl/jp person in the hive in Combat, who then destroyed the hive solo. Lobbing grenades left and right, hell, flying directly INTO the explosions to get the aliens off him and kill them. I'm right on top of him, full hp skulk, and one of his grenades kills me, when I know he had no armor left, and he survived. He shoul have died too, but nope, the game hates us.

In order to balance the use of the GL, and to make it less wanted by JPs, I propose to make the self damage % of the GL to the firer to 100%. Basicly, I want the GL to hurt the GLer the same way it would hurt an alien. The same damage will be done to aliens and the firing marine, provided they are both the same distance away. No longer will you have people rushing in headfirst with the GL and laughing while surrounded by explosions and watching everything die when he should have died along with it in a fiery inferno of kabooms.

In short, make the GL hurt the firer with the same damage that it would do to aliens. No more damage reduction!

I disagree, because no matter how good you are with the gl, you'll still fire once in a while and hit the back of a teammates head. Also, the GL would go from a crappy weapon close quarters to a detrimental weapon. If 5 people, w/higher live forms, no less, can't kill one JP, then they do not have "VERY good skill." One "VERY good" skulk with focus can kill a GL JP before the hive dies.

I agree with Blue Mary. This would increase a GLer's dependance on teammates for protection - and more teamwork is a good thing.

rofl ive seen people suicide with the gl it does hurt the user

i like this idea.

I don't see a problem with the GL's current self damage. Shoot and ono twice point blank and see what happens!!!

yeah, GLs already do hurt self if you're not careful. Besides, the true danger is in JP/Shotties in combat.

i dont know if this was mentioned before ... but what about raising the combat gl cost to two upgrade points?

I agree with making the GL a FF gun. It already hurts the user but not enough.

- But the n00bs will just TK!

You can't say that all the n00bs will go round killing people, because it is up to the Commander to dish out the GLs. If it's a n00b Com that shoves 5 GLs on the floor with no strategy then that's his fault, and if you don't like it find another server. If a n00b happens to pick up a GL from the floor he shouldn't be able to do too much damage before he either:
1. gets killed by the same alien that got the GL user
2. or runs out of ammo, the Com will refuse him any more ammo for TKing. If he goes back to stock up on ammo and does the same he'll eventually run out of health and the Com can deny him more medpacks. If he's intelligent enough to keep himself alive by humping the Armoury I'd suggest the Com drops GL #2 to eliminate the problem!

It really needs to do similar damage to the Marines as it does to Aliens. This could help in co_map spawn GL camps assuming not everyone goes for GL, and even if they do they'll just get 0wned by a bit of good gameplay. It would also add a bit more to the NS game. Firing nades from a distant position behind a Marine squad to give them a passive close-range damage radius is an exploit of a blatant problem with the GrenadeLauncher's damage parameters.

I understand that you can only do this for 4 shots, but with 2 GLs and a bit of timing you have a squad that no Alien's gonna touch for at least 5 seconds. If you got the reloading down to a T I don't wanna know how well this could work!