Smoke grenades

[cashfoyogash]

One thing I thought lacked in PS is smoke grenades. They have many uses; breaking contact, covering flanking maneuvers, signaling, etc.

They should also be able to have the color changed on them for signaling purposes.

Just think your in an infantry wedge formation and all of a sudden mass casualty causing weapons open up on your squad. Your squad takes cover and the SL signals for retreat or breaking contact in its correct term. A few squad members lob some smoke grenades and your squad begins to bound backwards and regroup at a rally point under the cover of smoke.

I also think that this should be one of the options you could apply to vehicles. Many tanks and vehicles today have canisters mounted on them (like 8 on a M1 Bradley) that can be fired for the same purposes.

[Kouza]

One thing I thought lacked in PS is smoke grenades. They have many uses; breaking contact, covering flanking maneuvers, signaling, etc.

They should also be able to have the color changed on them for signaling purposes.

Just think your in an infantry wedge formation and all of a sudden mass casualty causing weapons open up on your squad. Your squad takes cover and the SL signals for retreat or breaking contact in its correct term. A few squad members lob some smoke grenades and your squad begins to bound backwards and regroup at a rally point under the cover of smoke.

I also think that this should be one of the options you could apply to vehicles. Many tanks and vehicles today have canisters mounted on them (like 8 on a M1 Bradley) that can be fired for the same purposes.

This would cause unwanted Lag, and would easily be put over board in an MMO. Works in call of duty (18 people throwing them) not, in a MMO where 300 are throwing them.

COD some times lags when you throw to many lol.

[opticalshadow]

sounds fun in a thought but imagine a battle with 700 people (using ps1 numbers) and lets say half of them toss smoke nades.


now we all get to wander around a cont with no vision for the next two minutes.


smoke nades in a game where a theoretical thousand plus people at the same time with such a visual item is just bad news

[cashfoyogash]

haha yea i guess that could create problems... I just dont know if they would be that widely used.

[PsychoXR-20]

Smoke grenades probably wouldn't cause as much lag as you would think, a well done smoke grenade could probably be done with 5-6 polys at any given time (10,000 polys MAYBE if we had 2000 people all clumped up in one facility. If your computer cant handle 10k polygons you're not gonna be playing PS2).

The real problem has already been mentioned, being hundreds of not thousands of players all spamming them and the lack of visibility, and just general annoyance of them.

[Soothsayer]

I don't buy the lag argument anymore... Might have been true in PS1's day, might still be a little bit of a drag, but they are talking about volumetric clouds as a setting that can't be toggled.

If they wanted to cut down on the number of smoke nades at any given moment, they could limit them to a class or armor type. Easy solution so not every person has access to them at all times. Could further limit them by making them an attachment to a class limited weapon.

[Bruttal]

Yeah i have to say id enjoy smoke nads, don't really care if its diferrent colors or not though. theres few tactical ways you can use smoke still

[JanitOr KanOs]

They've said air vehicles will be able to hide in clouds. I don't see smoke 'nades being unreasonable.

[Sovereign]

Well seeing how this time around bandwidth limitations will not be as severe due to the mere fact of having 2000+ on any given continent should provide substantial empirical evidence to the contrary that somehow having counter measures or smoke screens would be a major tax on servers...

Curious to see if this could take place in other forms as well via certain weather patterns like sandstorms for instance. :)

[CutterJohn]

This would cause unwanted Lag, and would easily be put over board in an MMO. Works in call of duty (18 people throwing them) not, in a MMO where 300 are throwing them.

COD some times lags when you throw to many lol.

Then the game can go ahead and ignore 282 of the 300 smoke grenades tossed out in a tiny area.

As if a whole lot of people would take them over frags anyway.

[Infektion]

LOL, smoke grenades? you want to crash the server eh?

[Soothsayer]

LOL, smoke grenades? you want to crash the server eh?

If they have clouds like they're saying they do, smoke grenades won't be a problem.

[xcel]

You people keep assuming that there technology can't handle shit, like old planetside. But let's not forget that forgelight is state of the art. They are having ragdoll physics for gods sake...I think smoke grenades are going to be just fine.

[Logit]

Could you imagine if 3000 people threw 1 smoke grenade?

I'm not saying the new technology couldn't handle it. It would more so be annoying as hell.

[Death2All]

I swear I've seen this thread before...

Oh right, here http://www.planetside-universe.com/forums/showthread.php?p=576011

[FIREk]

How can client-side particle effects cause lag, or any server-side stress for that matter? :O

Smoke would be awesome. For some unknowable reason they tent to be taxing on hardware (rather than complex 3D models with bump mapping, lit from many sources, and a brazillion postprocessing effects), but volumetric fog will be in the game anyway.

I'm a big fan of any mechanics that can give a tactical advantage, in proper hands. I remember firing blindly into enemy smoke while playing airsoft, not knowing whether they're moving closer through the fog, or using it as a diversion to flank us. Good stuff, if you know how to use it.

[Soothsayer]

Oh right, someone mentioned smoke grenades somewhere and now we can't talk about them anymore...

[Bags]

How can client-side particle effects cause lag, or any server-side stress for that matter? :O

Smoke would be awesome. For some unknowable reason they tent to be taxing on hardware (rather than complex 3D models with bump mapping, lit from many sources, and a brazillion postprocessing effects), but volumetric fog will be in the game anyway.

I'm a big fan of any mechanics that can give a tactical advantage, in proper hands. I remember firing blindly into enemy smoke while playing airsoft, not knowing whether they're moving closer through the fog, or using it as a diversion to flank us. Good stuff, if you know how to use it.

I think the lag issue comes when everyone and their mom throws one simply to be a douche.

[Valdae]

I like the idea of smoke grenades, but I think they should be a 'command rank' privilege. This way they wont get spammed to oblivion.

[Lithious]

Im all for smoke grenades IF the forgelight engine can handle it and it doesn't causes lag. :)

[Sirisian]

I like the idea of smoke grenades, but I think they should be a 'command rank' privilege. This way they wont get spammed to oblivion.
I don't see how this could have anything to do with commanding.

But yeah in the other thread I supported this. Not sure why there is another thread all of a sudden. People must be bored without any information.

[Valdae]

I don't see how this could have anything to do with commanding.

Its not that hard...

Something that creates a big smokescreen temporarily changes the face of the battlefield, particularly in urban areas. Granting smoke grenades to people who have a low command rank means that they will nearly always get used tactically, and most importantly, make sure they are not spammed by everybody.

A battlefield spammed by people throwing smoke grenades would be ridiculous. We dont see this so much in other games as most people opt for other alternatives such as flashbangs, poison gas, etc..

[FIREk]

I think the lag issue comes when everyone and their mom throws one simply to be a douche.

Just to clarify... You mean lag as in network lag (high ping, packetloss), or "computer lag", the colloquial term for low framerate, stuttering, freezing etc that occurs client-side?

[Soothsayer]

Its not that hard...

Something that creates a big smokescreen temporarily changes the face of the battlefield, particularly in urban areas. Granting smoke grenades to people who have a low command rank means that they will nearly always get used tactically, and most importantly, make sure they are not spammed by everybody.

A battlefield spammed by people throwing smoke grenades would be ridiculous. We dont see this so much in other games as most people opt for other alternatives such as flashbangs, poison gas, etc..

Just have to limit who gets one... if you give a couple to every person, every spawn, then you're asking for trouble. If you offer it as an option to a certain class instead of something else, you won't get smoke nade spam.

Limiting by CR or SL skill tree is not the first idea I would have had. I would probably would be more likely to put it with engy.

[Death2All]

The main issue stemming from smoke grenades is performance issues (i.e. framerate lag) and spammability. Having to render a bunch of effects for smoke could prove tiring on some systems and given the scope of PS (1000v1000v1000) fights, there could potentially be a lot of smoke grenades purposely being spammed at once.

Some people have brought up limiting smoke grenades to people with a certain command level, but that doesn't rule out the possibility that there are a lot of assholes out there who wouldn't specifically spec them self in command just so they could spam smoke grenades.

Remember when people used to lay thousands of boomers on a continent and then blow them all up with a jammer and crash the server? Of course, this eventually got nerfed and they put a limit to the number of boomers you could have laid down at one time.

It is lame to turn down an idea because it could potentially be exploited/ruined by others, but at the same time you can't turn a blind eye to that possibility.

[Lonehunter]

I just imagined a team of cloakers on smoke duty, coordinating a massive spam of smoke clouds.

[Lunarchild]

Actually, I think Planetside should have some sort of equipment or grenade slotting for this. If you can only have one of the following, I doubt many would use it:

3 HE grenades 5 jammers 2 plasma grenades 1 smoke grenade (or more with a cooldown that is longer then the effect) health applicator repair applicator command tool REK

[Valdae]

Limiting by CR or SL skill tree is not the first idea I would have had. I would probably would be more likely to put it with engy.

We're on the right lines, but I feel engy is a more defense orientated class, and the smoke grenade is an offensive 'weapon'. Either way the idea is the same, make it so only certain classes can have a smoke grenade, and give it a decent effect radius.

[Soothsayer]

We're on the right lines, but I feel engy is a more defense orientated class, and the smoke grenade is an offensive 'weapon'. Either way the idea is the same, make it so only certain classes can have a smoke grenade, and give it a decent effect radius.

Agreed, I just didn't think that linking it to SL skilltree would work since everybody could have the SL skill trained regardless of class. Theoretically anybody would have access to it regardless of the class they were playing.

[headcrab13]

Smoke grenades make more sense for a slow, tactical shooter like Rainbow Six. I'd prefer not to see them in PS2, as they would detract from the faster pace that the devs are going for.

-HC13

[Vancha]

Smoke grenades make more sense for a slow, tactical shooter like Rainbow Six. I'd prefer not to see them in PS2, as they would detract from the faster pace that the devs are going for.

They aren't turning PS into Unreal Tournament...even if the pace is CoD/BF levels, PS will probably remain more tactical than either of them so I see no reason why there wouldn't be good uses for smoke grenades.

As has been said, to keep the numbers down you either restrict them to a certain class/classes, or depending on how load-outs will work, restrict people to a particular type of grenade. I imagine more people will opt for a lethal/jammer grenade over a smoke one.

[cashfoyogash]

Smoke grenades make more sense for a slow, tactical shooter like Rainbow Six. I'd prefer not to see them in PS2, as they would detract from the faster pace that the devs are going for.

-HC13

The only thing that will be more fast paced is how fast you die and supposedly being able to spawn on your squad which would be on the front lines, if some didnt die. They dont intend on battles going fast they said some may last for days even weeks for a territory. Sounds like plenty of uses to break contact and flank the enemy or conceal your movement when crossing a linear danger area (road).

[Masahiko]

I would prefer flash bangs before smoke grenades.

[DviddLeff]

I really want them in game, and we know that Forgelight can handle volumetric clouds, so I am sure smoke grenades would be possible.

Would love to use them for not only obscuring vision, but also signalling for bombing runs :twisted: