Add one second of randomness to hand primed grenades

[Challenger]

Summary (a quick, 2-3 sentence summary):
Hand grenades shouldn't be 2skil4u timing minigame that nearly guarantee a stun on any xeno in range if you're robust enough, with no counterplay by the xeno as they won't be able to see the grenade until it's too late. As such vary the time of any individual grenade to explode by around a second or so, so that you risk blowing your hand off if you try to secure an instant nade kill.

Benefits (How this will benefit the server and game as a whole):
Xenos don't get hand grenade cheesed without any ability to counter it themselves (+Gameplay).
Grenades will be thrown as soon as they're primed, as marines are taught to do in basic (+RP).
Grenade specialists actually use their grenade launcher now, balancing them against other specs (+RP & +Gameplay).

Details (Description of how you think this would work, the benefits, etc):
Instead of all hand grenades exploding at exactly 4 seconds, they explode at 3-5 seconds depending on the individual grenade.

Implementation (Optional, if you have an idea how to implement it):
Code, changelog

[Karmac]

only if there's a chance for it to blow up the instant you activate it

+1

[misto]

"2skil4u"? you really object to skilful gameplay being rewarded?

risking life and limb holding a live and ticking grenade is already its own downside

[Challenger]

Because it's skill against the interface, not against the xenos. From the xeno side there's nothing you can do to prevent instastunlock, since you have no warning whatsoever that the person you're seeing is priming a grenade and going to throw it at your feet with a 0.5 second fuse left.

In addition the actual risk is very negligible. Most people I see using this tactic, as well as when I tried it out, never explode themselves. You just count to three-four and throw. Even when it does blow up in your hands all it does is stun you for a few seconds and deal like 30-40 brute damage which is almost nothing provided you have others around you to help you up. In addition this risk is HUGELY negated by being a B18 spec. If you look at a skillful B18 spec play during the round it's basically just nonstop stunlocking aliens without them having any warning.

[misto]

ah, i see, so the problem here is that a handful of marines, through personal risk(and risk to any comrades standing near to them) and skilful use of their equipment, actually manage to stun and challenge the alien team, the alien team who has members with infinite stunning neurotoxic spit and tackles and pounces

[Diggman88]

-1. Just no, I don't want some Marine blowing up next to me because his grenade RNG went nope you lose!

Also we are the USCM of the future, we are not imperial Japan in 1944.

[Robotonic]

I like the idea of making GL's more useful but the problem is that hand-thrown grenades are already near useless if you don't cook them. If this were put through for a test you'd probably find a good 15 people get hit from people still cooking grenades before throwing them, then shortly after that people abandoning grenades entirely. High explosives would become paperweights and incendiaries be abandoned. I believe a grenade going off whilst you're still holding it typically breaks a bone and if not will cause some other horrific thing such as internal bleeding.

I'm against the idea of this being put through to counter grenade cooking, but I also don't have any alternative to suggest.

[JackStorm]

I agree that instastunlock is bad but I'll give -1. If devs rework the whole stun system of the game so even xenos don't have those annoying neurotoxes and pounces then yes, amen.

[Renomaki]

I think cooking the grenade was something skilled troopers did?

Also, wouldn't that make all grenades faulty if their fuse timers were random? Every grenade has their own fuse timer before they blow, having a nade that could just decide to blow up a second earlier or later would really mess with you and be horribly unsafe.

[Tidomann]

-1 seems unnecessary

It would create even more aversion to using hand grenades. If you feel the greandes are too strong compared to the risk that exists as is with stuns and pounces and byond lag/weird darkness not letting you throw then the grenade needs to be changed in a different way.