Another thing that could be tried out is an unique type of weapon that replaces WeaponType: STUN for Warboy Mod:
Let me explain:
Currently, the stun weapon that humanity starts the game out is kind of dumb.
It's literally a cattle prod; despite the fact that in 1999, we had taser guns, rubber bullets, bean bag rounds, etc in police arsenals to try and stop people non lethally.
In 1999, Taser International developed an "ergonomically handgun-shaped device called the ADVANCED TASER M-series systems"In military arsenals, there were a couple of gas weapons of possible use for an X-COM type organisation:
BZ Gas --In small doses, this makes you stupid, literally. You take your clothes off and mumble incoherently. At higher doses, you get knocked unconscious. Available since at least the 1960s.
Kolokol-1 Agent -- Kolokol-1 takes effect within one to three seconds, rendering the subject unconscious for two to six hours. Kills a certain amount of people anyway. Available since at least the 1980s in USSR arsenals.
The problem with just giving humanity a ranged stun weapon from the start of the game from a game design standpoint is this:
If you can just buy tasers or stun grenades off the shelf from the X-COM purchase menu and they are sufficiently good enough...who will ever research/use the
Small Launcher?
Thus it becomes an orphaned weapon, like the heavy cannon -- why use it when you can just use the autocannon?
A solution to this would be to more closely define WHAT stun does.
Currently, it's a magic 'knock people unconscious with no ill effects' rating; implemented as such for the stun rod:
power: 65
damageType: 6But what if you coded the game so that stun weapons were more like this?
damageType: 666 <-stand in for NEWSTUN
StunPower: <-- How much stunning power the weapon has
HurtPower: <-- How much hurt power the weapon has
HumanReaction: <-- Percentage of times that they have an adverse reaction to it
HumanModifier: <-- Multiplier of damage vs that type
SectoidReaction: <-- Percentage of times that they have an adverse reaction to it
SectoidModifier: <-- Multiplier of damage vs that type
MutonReac...
MutonMod...
...
.etc
Basically, you could then implement something like rubber bullets for existing X-COM weapons:
damageType: 666 <-stand in for NEWSTUN
StunPower: 7 <-- How much stunning power the weapon has
HurtPower: 4 <-- How much hurt power the weapon has
HumanReaction: 0.18 <-- You have a 18% chance of an incredibly adverse reaction which leads to death each time you use it. For a rubber bullet, it's hitting someone in the head.
HumanModifier: 1 <-- Humans are standard.
SectoidReaction: 0.25 <-- Due to larger head to body ratio of sectoid, you're more likely to cause brain damage with each shot.
SectoidModifier: 1.25 <-- Due to sectoid weak pasty bodies, they get hurt more when shot with rubber bullets
MutonReaction: 0.05 <-- because of their incredible built in body armor, and general stupidity; it's really hard to kill a muton with rubber bullets.
MutonModifier: 0.25 <-- because of their built in body armor, they really don't feel rubber bullets at all.
So basically, a good shot can inflict 7 stun at the same time it subtracts 4 HP from the target's HP reserve; meaning you could actually kill someone, especially if you roll a reaction modifier.
For human BZ-1 knockout gas, it could be something like this:
damageType: 666 <-stand in for NEWSTUN
StunPower: 25
HurtPower: 10
HumanReaction: 0.50 <-- You have a 50% chance of an adverse reaction
HumanModifier: 1 <-- Humans are standard.
...
With some variation for each alien race. So it could lead to some unintended hilarity like you find an Ethereal commander and try to stun him with a Gas Grenade; only to find out that he got an adverse reaction to the BZ-1/Kolokol-1 and died, or killing a bunch of civilians who were in a house along with a sectoid...
...and of course, Mutons wading through clouds of BZ-1, completely unaffected.
This way, you could have a range of human stun weapons going from:
Electro-Stun Pistol -- Replaces Cattle Prod as the 1 square stunning weapon. Cheap, lightweight; no X-COM operative should be without one. Mutons are invulnerable due to their thick skin preventing the TASER (the name is copyrighted, so Electro-Stun in game) darts from penetrating, etc. Can stun an alien or human without killing them generally.
Blunt Trauma Clips -- You could have rubber bullets for rifles and bean bag rounds for larger caliber weapons like grenade launchers. This is humanity's early ranged stun device. Kind of a mixed dice. You could knock someone to the ground or you could hit them in the head and kill them. Kind of a roll of a dice.
Gas Grenades -- Wide area, persistent weapon. Could use color-remapped smoke texture. Problem is, the effects would be cumulative like smoke inhalation currently is in the game. So you could end up killing people if you leave them in the gas cloud long enough to have an adverse reaction -- and some targets just die anyway.
And on the Alien side, you'd have the Small Launcher, with it's 100% reliable and safe stun that works on
everything, from humans to Mutons without hurting/killing the target; giving players a reason to research and use the small launcher for
extremely high value target takedown.
Course, there's a lot more refinement that needs to be done to this idea -- it has to be thrashed out and talked about a lot more, since this would be a major gameplay change, and we don't want to rush into that kind of thing willy-nilly.
