Decimator's Mechanic of Targeting a Square

Artminius

It occurred to me the other day that the Decimator's mechanic of targeting any square, not just an entity, has a TON of utility for other special functionality weapons. Let's brainstorm!

Sticky Bomb
Normal attack roots one non-tank walker and deals no damage.
Charged attack can target any square that isn't a blocking square (i.e., not a crate or building or whatnot). That square becomes a stopping square for the rest of the mission (like the quicksand in some episode maps). Any entity that enters the square must stop; it can still attack, and it can move as normal out of the square on its next turn.

Crater Maker
Normal attack does damage to one walker.
Charged attack can target any square that isn't a blocking square (i.e., not a crate or building or whatnot). That square becomes a 'crater'. The effect is either:
* The square becomes impassible, but entities can still shoot or ranged melee over it.
* The square uses 2-3 movement points to cross (2 if orthogonal, 3 if diagonal).

Burst Grenade
Normal attack does damage to one walker.
Charged attack can target any square that isn't a blocking square. A blast attack radiates from that square like a normal-arc assault weapon, as if the firing character was in that square, at an angle drawn from the firing character's actual square to the target square.

Your ideas...?

ATLAS-Z

I'm hoping that this mechanic can open the door to a whole new type of item in the game.

I suggested a long time ago of introducing secondary items that characters can bring in to a mission.

Grenades
Flash grenades
Concussion grenades
Fire grenades
Smoke grenades
Health pack
Flares
C4
Noise maker

There could be a feature for each character could bring in 1 expendable item into a mission. Once it's used that's it no more.

use expendable items could be another thing created in the Craftsman building.

that one slot we used to see that said coming soon... Well this could be it. Higher rarity components could be used to craft multiple secondary items or weaker rarity components could craft just one.

@Fluxxx I wonder if the team has thought of this.

TJCart

@Artminius I'm not so sure about your Sticky Bomb or Crater Maker. There has never been a mechanic that permanently alters a map aside from pushing objects that are built into the map. Seems like this could be exploited pretty easily, especially with more than one Charge attack, unless that "replaced" the previous crater or something.

Perhaps, something more in the spirit of the current mechanics would be more of a "Caltrop Launcher." Similar effect to your Sticky Bomb, but the target square and maybe surrounding 8 squares gets blasted with Caltrops on that Charge attack. The idea being that they'd only affect walkers in that blast radius with a slowing effect and not have a lasting effect on the ground tiles. Or if they did, it would only affect the first walker that passed over it and be consumed. Heck you could still call it the "Sticky Bomb."

Good fresh ideas, I just feel like it can't leave lasting effects on the map.

Artminius

@ATLAS-Z , I'm just thinking no big, net-new code (which a new slot would definitely require). Everything I propose is existing methods they could apply. But, sure, I'd love to see a variety of grenades that used the Decimator target-any-square mechanic. THAT's a 'killer app' that needs more use than just one special-functionality weapon.

@TJCart , you said it yourself: moving stuff changes the map. A former blocking square is no longer blocking; and a former open square is now blocking (be it also sight/shot-blocking or not). Nothing new here.

The real 'exploit' would be making a permanent wall of craters that nothing could cross, thereby leading to 100 kills. I ain't sayin' that's good or bad; just a new take. I definitely put two bullets for that reason, on Crater Maker. But simply a one-time-stop or +1 move point square...? I'm not thinking that's a major exploit. And all THAT said, sure: make it expendable on sticky bomb (cratering suddenly going away has less verisimilitude).

Just brainstorming! There are no wrong ideas in a brainstorm. Gimme IDEAS!!!

emsboy

Has anyone else had the issue with this totally badass 'nade launcher that moves your player to the square you actually want to launch a grenade to? This is obviously only when using your charged attack. Several times this has happened to me now and it usually ends up comprising me. Anyone? What am doing wrong?

TJCart

Could you be selecting your charge attack, selecting another survivor, and then selecting your assault with a grenade launcher again, thinking that it's still active? If you select another team member, it deactivates your special attack.

emsboy

No. It seems like if I want to target a square between players but its beside a place to cover I will move to the cover instead of launching the grenade. This only happens sometimes and it never happens if I am targeting an enemy directly.

TJCart

emsboy said:

No. It seems like if I want to target a square between players but its beside a place to cover I will move to the cover instead of launching the grenade. This only happens sometimes and it never happens if I am targeting an enemy directly.

Well it doesn't seem like it's happened to many other people. Take a video and post it to the bugs or game issues section. That way it'll not only exactly show NG what the problem is, but allow others to see the problem you're having to see if we can recreate it as well.