A flame thrower will be added if, and only if, it can be done correctly and be astheically appealing. As for hand grenades, I personally don't see a need for them, it gives the grenade laucnher more of a use <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
Yeah, it really is all in the balancing. It would be NICE to have hand grenades, but then that would take a lot of wind out of the skulk's early advantage. There are some really subtle differences between the weapons in NS; for example, none of the 1-hive monsters can take a tripmine....but a fade can. And most of your standard LMG-wielders can't do sh|t againt a Fade (especially if he has regeneration), but a Jetpacker with a HMG can get the job done quite easily.
Adding hand grenades would throw the balance, as far as I see it. It would be like allowing the skulk to detonate tripmines with his parasite; it would make many alien attacks much less useful. It would allow marines to spam hives early on (and probably kill them, with enough explosives), give "naked" marines a fighting chance against a fully-upgrades fade, and pretty much throw everything that is RTS about the two teams. I say just stick to the grenade launcher.
Flamethrower I have no problem against; I see it as sort of a weapon that bridges the gap betwen shotgun and HMG (that is, if the shotgun's cost is lowered....those things are too damned expensive to be useful).
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Adding hand grenades would throw the balance, as far as I see it. It would be like allowing the skulk to detonate tripmines with his parasite; it would make many alien attacks much less useful. It would allow marines to spam hives early on (and probably kill them, with enough explosives), give "naked" marines a fighting chance against a fully-upgrades fade, and pretty much throw everything that is RTS about the two teams. I say just stick to the grenade launcher.
Flamethrower I have no problem against; I see it as sort of a weapon that bridges the gap betwen shotgun and HMG (that is, if the shotgun's cost is lowered....those things are too damned expensive to be useful).
The game has numerous subtle little diffrences that make classes vary wildly.