Make gas and smoke last 5x-10x longer than it does

[Scheveningen]

Gas and smoke of any kind are both kind of too easily avoided to be worth using at the moment. The usual tactic for using smoke is to toss it somewhere and have it obscure your presence in the area as you make either a quick escape or a very unpredictable entrance into an area. It also completely counters lasers as you must be able to see someone to hit them with a direct hit, and gas prevents this entirely... that is, for the 10 seconds it's working. For gas it's a similar concept, except instead of wanting to stay inside the smoke for protection, you would want to stay out of toxic gas instead if you don't have a gas mask. For deadly gas, this allows for crowd control measures to be used reasonably to deny access to a specific area. Each has their own specific tactical purpose but it's greatly diminished by the fact that smoke and gas of any kind lasts for barely a few seconds. Both should last up to an entire minute before beginning to dissipate. Buffing them to this degree would greatly allow for different support item options to be weaponized in a variety of situations, allowing for creative usage of noxious gas or obscuring phosphorus bombs to greatly change the outcome of a situation.

Increasing their base duration and then having their thickness fall off gradually would not only be closer to reality but it would also increase the up-time of smoke-based grenades and such. It'd also make the wizard spell and the smoke machine circuit quite useful.

Edited May 23, 2019 by Scheveningen

[Conspiir]

I can agree that smoke lasts a really short time, and could last a bit longer to really make an impact in some situations. I also love the idea of the gradual thickness reduction. Keep in mind, too, this will also impact scrubber discharges I believe. Meaning an overall increase in what's being spewed out that could pose a bit of a problem if the already substantial amount is increased (looking at you, ethanol).

 

I, personally, just don't know how long that they should last or how long (exactly) they last now. It doesn't even feel like 10 seconds most of the time. But in video game fights, even 10 seconds can be an eternity. Maybe someone else has more thoughts on it.

[AmoryBlaine]

If we want this, we also need to normalize gasmasks. The scrubber backfires happen quite often. It's silly that we don't have gasmasks available to more people.

[ben10083]

18 hours ago, AmoryBlaine said:

If we want this, we also need to normalize gasmasks. The scrubber backfires happen quite often. It's silly that we don't have gasmasks available to more people.

It usually causes metagaming by others, and lets face it, would make teargas useless towards antags or groups of people (who would have gasmasks in backpack "just in case"). Overall, we have the medical facilities to handle hazardous gas, and spamming gasmask everywhere will cause more harm than good.