Sorry to whine but this was really annoying:

Went on another kill\capture agent mission. I was hoping to capture an agent and get out, but he was in a room where I knew there was at least a couple of soldiers. But the good part was our evac zone was really close... I thought, "Straight in, flashbang, shoot the guy dead- straight out. Maybe we`ll take a couple of shots as we run to the Evac but we`ll be ok."

I brought 2 people with a heavy weapon, flashbang and heavy gun.

After taking out the guards by stealth we got up to the door. Opened it- yep, 2 guards with the enemy agent inbetween right in my sights...

Threw in a flashbang. One soldier and the agent got -100 awareness. My other guy opened fire with the MG, brought his health down to about 15.

Next turn, the agent throws a grenade! What? Isn`t he blinded by the flashbang? Should he be confused and even if he throws a grenade, have a good chance to miss? Nope. Grenade explodes, completely knackers my men.

Then the other soldiers open fire- everyone collapses to the ground- mission failed.

sigh... I had the initiative and the ambush - got wasted with no enemy losses. This just isn`t intuitive to what I expect close combat to be.

Seriously, I`m afraid to go on any mission where I might have to fight. I just cancel now. Hope the patches fix much of this.

I dont think grenades should miss but regular weapons should. And they should be blinded for like a turn or 2.

Grenades can miss if you`re deafened and blinded and don`t know which way is back or forward- at least in reality they do. In most cases though a guy should just keep it in his hand until he can see again.

I agree though in making them blind for 2 turns.

That`s the talk of a person who cares not for how things really work. If they were fuffly cats shooting fish guns you`d be happy. No point discussing it with you.

Yep blinding laser is a one-turn cc that affects a single target and removes overwatch and prevents them for firing at you on their turn.

I think if flashbangs both removed all awareness and made enemies unable to fire they would be too powerful. With that said so far they seem like a much weaker choice than a frag grenade to me, but then again most enemies have less than 75hp at the stage I'm at, I used a frag recently to 1-hit-kill a full group of 4 reinforcing enemy soldiers, quite a bit more powerful than stripping 3 of them of their awareness (the 4th guy wasn't in blast radius but died to a car explosion). If later in the game you get clusters of enemy agents or if normal enemies get more HP or armor I could see a use for flashbangs.

So, the flashbang in the game is actually a child friendly version, lets call it a "popspark"?
Because having an item in a game called a flashbang and have it act like a real world flashbang, as defined in your post, would be too overpowered if it was in a game.

I'm sure if a little thought was given the effects could be plausibly mitigated, within the context of the era.

If you dont want them blinded by the flashbang why not remove the flash and call it, I dont know, a "concussion grenade"? Or if you want them blinded and not concussed, then use a "smoke grenade".

With firsthand experience I can say, if you are in the same room as a detonating flashbang you will be too busy covering your important body bits or coming down from the ceiling to instantly throw a grenade as a response, unless you were that moment extremely well prepared. There is a reason it's called disorientation.

Thank you for your reply.

Ok, but you`re very own post shows they were blinded and deafened - in other words disorientated. It may be brief but it isn`t so brief that a person can reorientate themselves and shoot accurately immediately after. 5 seconds is a VERY long time in combat, then you also have the recovery period afterwards. In cases like that we`re looking at nearly 10 seconds! This is almost an eternity in combat. It`s all about context, not how short the time seems in a normal non violent situation.

Seriously time 5 seconds then time 8 seconds while imagining being blinded and deafened. 5 seconds alone is long, not brief in this context.

This is certainly worth two turns of grace for anyone attacking them successfully with a flashbang.

In the case of the SAS every flashbang used on a target left the target dead once the SAS had entered the room and shot the target. The targets were never able to recover and retaliate in time. There was no retaliation of any so blinded and deafened target.

If there is a retaliation, it would be a wild retaliation with the target randomly shooting in any direction, a danger more to his friends.

Blinding laser is nice, but that`s besides the issue. The flashbang should also blind, regardless that the laser does too.

The point here is, things should do what most of us know they would do, not something else that Devs arbitrarily decide they should do, that we now have to relearn, especially in a world based on a real world 1980s combat. It should be intuitive, not "Oh what are the gamey rules of using this real world weapon today?"

p.s. I am a big fan of real world combat and tactics, including the SAS. So, yes, I really want a flashbang to, at the very least, blind and deafen my opponents, so they cannot act immediately and fight back, like they did when they attacked the Iranian embassy.

I haven't done much combat (nearly all of the missions I've done to date are infiltration only, so no combat apart from takedowns), but perhaps every action aside from movement should cost a bit of awareness.

For example if throwing a grenade cost 10 awareness (and if I remember correctly, awareness regenerates around 20/turn to start with), then in most normal circumstances you can throw a grenade each turn (unless you are taking a lot of enemy fire); but if a flash bang comes along and drains your awareness to 0, then you will have one turn in which you can't retaliate until your awareness regenerates (but you would still be able to position yourself safely).

At the moment, I consider flashbang grenades as a useless tool in my inventory.

I consider that if my agents have to fight, given that they only have 2 slots each, a medkit and frags, with the occassional lockpicks, are the way to go.

Not to mention that anything crafted doesn't really come as cheap even if you have the tech : 600 units or whatever and 12h producing them for lockpicks !?

Would be nice to have real tactical options (like in JA2), but I don't blame this game : X-Com did it as poorly.

IMO flashbangs should not only stop enemies from using abilities (which they do indirectly already due to reducing awareness), but also equipment such as grenades.

I might be a tad biased because I'm used to the way flashbangs worked in XCOM2, where all enemies affected would not be able to use the majority of their abilities in addition to losing significant accuracy. Instead of losing accuracy (since there is none in PD) they should do minimal damage with their weapons (and only be able to use basic attacks).

I agree one turn is enough for the effect though - any more than that would be both unrealistic and OP. If the enemy's damage were significantly curtailed (e.g. via minimum damage) and most abilities unable to be used, then one turn should be enough.

Having said all of that, in the OP's situation using "breach" may have been the best option and would have likely not required using a flashbang in the first place.

Thats the problem with no RNG on shots. This game really should have shot % so a flashbang could reduce it on enemies to a very low level.

I sort-of agree - no RNG doesn't seem to quite fit this game as well as it did Invisible Inc. That game had no RNG either, but it worked really well for a number of reasons: combat was always in tight quarters, and enemies wouldn't immediately open fire (instead they would point the gun at you plus the alarm would go up a level - they'd only fire if you moved (unless you got out of their sights in one square) or when their next turn rolled around (if you didn't stop them or get out of their sights)). I don't think making enemies behave like in Invisible Inc would help this game though - it would make it far too easy for one thing, and it wouldn't really make sense in this setting.

However, if flashbangs ensured that enemies can only use basic shots, and those shots were guaranteed to only do minimum damage, then that would go a long way to making flashbangs actually useful (since I doubt RNG is going to be implemented in this game, since that's a major design change).

I think they tried to go with the Hard West luck mechanic except they changed it a bit for the worse and we ended up with the zero RNG thing. I wish we got shot % and maybe later they can add it.

They devs were hardline on Hard West with manual saves as well but added it eventually, so they need to sometimes ignore what they desire to do with the game and make players happy and RNG is a key element in these type of games. I didnt need the manual saves but i do need the shot %.