EMP Grenades

[kronf]

The biggest anti-aggro nerf is going to be getting rid of side grabs IMO. They caused so many problems. If side grabs don't exist then you can back to a wall and be completely invulnerable to grabs. That'll hurt aggro considerably.

While I agree the grab box needs to be adjusted better, I don't think it will have much effect on anything if at all.

[Gawain]

it takes 4 seconds after pulling your weapon until the chaff explodes. so one can't use chaff for running away anymore. your example on club does only make sense with the smaller proxy mine trigger radius you suggested, because disabling the spytrap with chaff and triggering the mines by running a small circle would be sufficient.

generally i have to concede that you are right that giving chaff a larger radius is probably a bad idea, but i think chaff needs some kind of boost if you take away it's strongest ability. especially the disk type objective will get quite harder, creating a new challenge for the level designers.

another idea of boosting chaff would be increasing the number. it won't help aggro as one can't spam it well with the delay, but it will help spies that play carefully and don't die the whole game, thus not getting new equipment.

regarding the grab hitbox: it won't make a big difference i guess.

[InvisibleMan999]

What about This:

Buffs to chaff:
-Acts as a flashbang against mercs in MT.
-slightly larger radius
-makes no noise at all.

Nerfs to chaff:
-Doesn't go through walls (assuming programmers can get it to work right)
-Doesn't prevent merc reload anymore (that was kind of stupid anyway)
-Doesn't disable proxies at all.

[InvisibleMan999]

will one still face the direction a punch came from? will punch+insta grab be possible? (i think it should, but atm most times only the host is able to do so)

For this, I say that after you elbow shot somebody, you shouldn't be able to grab them, but your partner should. So you can elbow them into your partner, but you can't do any kind of 1man punch + grab host cheese, since that's really nothing more than a disguised host grab.

[Wanted_David]

Punch+insta grab is really frustrating if you're merc, but way cool when you do it to other mercs :D. It's a nice feature/glitch and grants some advantage for the spies, and compensates the lack of firepower. That has to be included in P:S. Make a lot of spies' dreams come true :D.

[Farley4Fan]

Yeah but currently the punch + grab doesn't happen 100% of the time.  This is a reason that spies don't always go for necks after they elbow someone, sometime they just run away and try to buy some time with that elbow.  If it was implemented it wouldh have to be added very carefully and not too powerful and overwhelming.

[Gawain]

the mt (/emf?) flashbang idea sound interesting, but how is it supposed to work exactly?

[Gui Brazil]

Nerfs to chaff:
-Doesn't disable proxies at all.

I completely disagree. If I'm running away from  a merc, I won't have the time to crouch, remove a mine and keep going. I'll just throw a chaff so it doesn't go boom on me, and keep avoiding bullets to get up on my ass.

[Spekkio]

What about This:

Buffs to chaff:
-Acts as a flashbang against mercs in MT.
-slightly larger radius
-makes no noise at all.

No. This is encroaching on basically re-introducing PT chaff, which made flashbangs obsolete.

Nerfs to chaff:
-Doesn't go through walls (assuming programmers can get it to work right)
-Doesn't prevent merc reload anymore (that was kind of stupid anyway)
-Doesn't disable proxies at all.

Again, no. I already detailed why chaff must affect proxies. Go back to page 8 or 9 and re-read that explanation. There's also no reason to take out the fact that it disables merc reload.

it takes 4 seconds after pulling your weapon until the chaff explodes. so one can't use chaff for running away anymore. your example on club does only make sense with the smaller proxy mine trigger radius you suggested, because disabling the spytrap with chaff and triggering the mines by running a small circle would be sufficient.

Example 2: Cinema. You want to grab the disk. You throw a chaff at the lower lobby objective area, and any mines in there are automatically disabled due to the larger radius. It would even be more advantageous than having chaff going through walls and being smaller, since one chaff won't do the job currently.

Example 3: Museum inner cafe. Quick-Throw a chaff in the middle of the room and the merc is pretty much at the mercy of aggro spies unless he finds the small doorway and runs away.

I can come up with a ton of these.

The biggest anti-aggro nerf is going to be getting rid of side grabs IMO. They caused so many problems. If side grabs don't exist then you can back to a wall and be completely invulnerable to grabs. That'll hurt aggro considerably.

While I agree the grab box needs to be adjusted better, I don't think it will have much effect on anything if at all.

I agree.

Yeah but currently the punch + grab doesn't happen 100% of the time.  This is a reason that spies don't always go for necks after they elbow someone, sometime they just run away and try to buy some time with that elbow.  If it was implemented it wouldh have to be added very carefully and not too powerful and overwhelming.

Actually, without extreme lag punch + grab never works. The merc always has a small timeframe which he can berserk, and you can always jump immediately after a berserk without getting grabbed.

I completely disagree. If I'm running away from  a merc, I won't have the time to crouch, remove a mine and keep going. I'll just throw a chaff so it doesn't go boom on me, and keep avoiding bullets to get up on my ass.

If chaff doesn't go through walls, that probably won't work, which is part of the point of it.

[InvisibleMan999]

the mt (/emf?) flashbang idea sound interesting, but how is it supposed to work exactly?

Basically, the same way a flash works, only people in normal vision are immune and people in MT get blinded. We could change the chaff blinding effect from a flood of white to a lot of static for effect if we wanted to.

I wouldn't want it to effect EMF, because EMF is easy enough to beat as far as visions go anyway. But I figure it'd be another way to help balance out MT.

An alternate idea is instead of blinding, it could draw the MT box for the duration of the chaff, forcing the box to lock onto the chaff, and making it unable to lock onto anything else. Though that might be a bit too powerful, so blinding is probably a better option, as you could basically fire off a chaff in the middle of the room and render MT useless as an aggro spy. So yeah, best bet might be go with the first idea.

[Spekkio]

Invisible,

Most of your complaints about MT are that you can't sneak by a merc when he's using it. How is a "MT flashbang" going to help you sneak past a merc any differently than what we have now? It's going to just buff aggro, since currently MT/EMF are your only safeguards against getting bombarded with grenades and being blind for 30 seconds.

[Gawain]

 :) :D ;D
spekkio ftw

[Tidenburg]

It isn't hard (not sure about unreal though) to stop chaffs going through walls. The actually dust, maybe, but to stop it from affecting the player you simply have to check the line between the grenade and the player and see if the line his the wall. If so then the wall is in the way. As i've said i'm not sure if it is that simple for unreal but in the basics i've done in other languages...