2 small questions

[haze]

1. Is there a flag drop command in AGR? If not, why? Don't all other tf mods have it.

2. What would you think about smoke grenades also providing "some type" of protection against engineer builds and monsters/grunts ? You would think that sentries and teslas would be less accurate shooting at targets through smoke. Security cameras, motion sensors, monsters/grunts should also have a harder time detecting you through smoke . Not a big deal really. Just a thought.

[sapphired]

1. Is there a flag drop command in AGR? If not, why? Don't all other tf mods have it.

+1
sign. it's not polite to kill or force to suicide slow teammate to drop the flag

2. What would you think about smoke grenades also providing "some type" of protection against engineer builds and monsters/grunts ? You would think that sentries and teslas would be less accurate shooting at targets through smoke. Security cameras, motion sensors, monsters/grunts should also have a harder time detecting you through smoke . Not a big deal really. Just a thought.

+1 sign
smoke grenades are mostly really unusefull now and they are more for fun then func.

[OneManClan]

1. Is there a flag drop command in AGR? If not, why? Don't all other tf mods have it.

Yea.... it seems to have stopped working at some point, and I have no idea why. Off the top of my head... it could be from when the flag code was rewritten so that flags were visible (ie when carried)... I'll look into it as soon as I have some time; I agree, it should be there.

2. What would you think about smoke grenades also providing "some type" of protection against engineer builds and monsters/grunts ? You would think that sentries and teslas would be less accurate shooting at targets through smoke. Security cameras, motion sensors, monsters/grunts should also have a harder time detecting you through smoke . Not a big deal really. Just a thought.

Yes, it wouldn't hurt to have the smoke grenade affect more things in-game. The original idea for the smoke grenade was for it to provide cover against snipers. Unfortunately, they don't always provide cover, so recently, a 'brute force' method was adopted, where bullets are 'forced' to occasionally 'miss' when passing through smoke.

Monsters: If they can 'smell' ( and sloppily attack) thieves who come too close, they probably should see through smoke, though maybe not from a distance - maybe 'detection distance' can be affected by whether a (potential) target is in smoke.

Teslas and Sgs: I guess it depends on ones concept of how they work. If the tesla can be upgraded to detect spies, this implies a potential 'super vision', so Engineers weapons must sense enemies beyond visually...?

Cameras/motion detectors: these are totally based on 'seeing' stuff... should they be able to see through smoke?.. maybe they should. 'Camera' does implies a purely visual device, so (maybe) it should be affected by smoke..

Grunts - not sure.. Definitely something to thing about..

[haze]

Thanks for the reply. You thought a lot deeper into the smoke grenade thing. Well said.

But now that i think about it, those changes would almost entirely benefit the offense. Is that fair? I don't know. Maybe just leave it =)

Even if you didnt want to make any other changes to the smoke grenade, do you think it might be useful to have the smoke grenade act like a gas grenade, in that it can explode midair and continue to pump out gas/smoke at the detonated height? Right now it always falls to the ground, which is realistic and cool (i use it on the payload cart), but i could see more use in allowing it to create a smoke barrier higher and lower to block total vision from enemies. Ofcourse one could still throw it to the ground for the original behavior. This is a genuine question, i don't know if its a good idea or not.

[OneManClan]

Thanks for the reply. You thought a lot deeper into the smoke grenade thing. Well said.
But now that i think about it, those changes would almost entirely benefit the offense. Is that fair? I don't know. Maybe just leave it =)

The Smoke Grenade has been a weird one. Sometimes (when defending) I throw them in spots to make the enemy stall, but since both teams see the smoke I'm really not sure if they do more harm than good. eg the entrance to the yard in rock2 - sure, Red attackers hesitate before they enter the yard (or risk moving through the smoke not being able to see the other side), but Blue can't see the doorway neither, so if a piper plants pipes in the rock2 doorway and someone throws smoke on them, the piper can't see if the enemy is in the pipes. This might just mean more communication/coordination..

Even if you didnt want to make any other changes to the smoke grenade, do you think it might be useful to have the smoke grenade act like a gas grenade, in that it can explode midair and continue to pump out gas/smoke at the detonated height? Right now it always falls to the ground, which is realistic and cool (i use it on the payload cart), but i could see more use in allowing it to create a smoke barrier higher and lower to block total vision from enemies. Ofcourse one could still throw it to the ground for the original behavior. This is a genuine question, i don't know if its a good idea or not.

Well.. I'd choose 'superior gameplay' over 'realism', so if there was some situation where a 'hovering' mid air smoke screen would be 'better', sure.

[rincewind]

Some nice little ideas but I'm automatically against anything that makes an Engineers life harder. Until I start playing against god-like engineers, weakening the class further will just result in less people playing engineer.
The anti-grav gun for stock engineers would be a great addition but I know you think its too game changing OMC despite us testing it on the olde 4TP server with good results.

Speaking about anti-grav, I was always a fan of the anti-grav grenade that the smoke one replaced. It was essentially useless if you knew how to conc jump though

[haze]

I think you nailed it there, right now the smoke grenade is like equal opportunity mayhem for both teams, no matter what side is using it haha. like saph said, more for fun than func.

except on payload, i think its pretty useful for red to use it on the cart to stop snipers from picking them off.

Since we can name a bunch of ideas that would benefit smoke grenades for the offense...in what way could it benefit the defense to balance out any of red's advantages?

[Beltan]

Combine Gas and Smoke grenades together. Players with Scuba Gear or Scanner should be able to see through the smoke.