Have you guys thought about A and B pods in the game?
for those of you who dont know about them, they're in CBT, and they're sort of like strapping a bunch grenades and such shrapnel inducing objects to a mechs legs, to discourage/kill any infantry/battle armor that are attacking your mechs legs. They also have smoke rounds avaible for the,, and that is what im really intersted in.
I was thinking when you fire them, smoke would desperse around you. I'd really like to see the smoke decrease the radar signature of any mech inside, but I dont think that is possible, or easy to impliment. However, would it be easier to temporarly decrese radar sig of the mech that fired the smoke pod for a split second? so you could at least throw off your opponets radar lock for a moment?

If your wondering how smoke could decrease a mechs radar signature you could add some flashy sparkle effects to simulate metalic dust, or strips of metal foil, maybe add some flares to make it look more like countermeasures, maybe the flares would counter thermal, or don't add the flares, so thermal could be the way counter to smoke... you could also add the same effects to smoke agl rounds and so on. 2nd thought if satellite view is thermal based as has been suggested (they say they detect mechs via thier fusion reactor), then burning smoke rounds could be used to fool those with satellite view.

no.

Can you be more constructive with your ctitisim? i'm just throwing out ideas here, you dont have to add all of my suggestions. a simple NO does NOne any good.

No, because Infantry and BA aren't a signifigant threat, it woudl be a waste of effort beause nobody would use them. Additionally, you can't AOE (Area of Effect) weaposn that differentiate between friend and foe (or the firing mech either). It would damage the firing mech as much as any targets in range

So waste of time, no need for it, and not properly supported by the engine. I actually did think about it a couple years ago when we were adding BA and Infantry, but the backdraws mentioned were very relevent.

Battle Armor and Infantry are very easy to dispatch as it is. Long toms = everyone dies.

Looking at trip's whole post, as opposed to the first sentence, the point seems to not be so much about having anti-personnel pods, but rather smoke pods - I suppose some sort of fireable weapon similar to a flare or Smoke-AGL, but that detonates at the feet of your mech or disperses a smoke cloud around it, perhaps with radar signature reducing properties.

Im all for the Smoke Pod. I'm picturing a Smoke AGL that 'sticks' to the Mech that fires it. If it keeps moving, it's possition is easily seen by all by following the smoke, but moving around in one smaller area would provide cover for friendly units.

The Claymore type Pods I can take or leave. They would be interesting, but as said, the cons probably outweigh the pros as far as balance is concerned.

thanks for considering the whole post!

bumblebee, I not so sure about the smoke sticking to you, imagine a dasher running around 200kph inside a moving smoke cloud. All you'd see is this crazy thing of smoke moving around at blazing speeds... I think a stationary cloud would be best, though you could have a long burning version, to create a longish smoke trail behind you.

What do you guys think about smoke lowering mechs radar signature? any way we could get trees to burn and create smoke too?

Chaff pods are something that I suggested recently in our development forums. They would be equipment ideally, not a weapon, and would remove locks and sensor visibility. Their possibility is being contemplated currently.

Thread locked to avoid unnecessary speculation.