The New World Update #21

The latest development update for Iron Tower Studio’s sci-fi RPG The New World is oddly specific and offers a detailed rundown of grenades and headgear we’ll have at our disposal during our journey through The New World’s colony ship. Here are a few examples:

Ship-made Grenades (cheap and fairly common, many enemies will have several grenades on their belts).

1. Gas Grenade – creates a visible 7×7 poison cloud that hovers over the affected area for 2 turns and does X damage per turn for Y number of turns (once poisoned).

If poison gets through the respirator or mask (i.e. the mask doesn’t block the poison entirely), it causes low damage to physical stats (STR, DEX, CON), which is worse than 2-3 points of damage per turn.

So the gas grenades’ stats are:

• Damage per turn
• Number of turns once poisoned
• Stat damage (damage range is 1-3; 1 is common, 3 is rare).

Defense:

• respirators (half masks), gas masks (full masks), full helmets to reduce poison DR
• implant (synthetic heart with blood purifier) to reduce poison stat damage

2. Flashbang Grenade – instant flash in the middle of a 7×7 area that sets all affected enemies’ PER to 1 (thus lowering THC), reduces their AP by 10 (disoriented), and sets Evasion to 0. All effects last 1 turn, Evasion penalty starts during the player’s turn and ends after the enemy’s turn.

Defense: Combat goggles, full helmets, or implant (bionic eye) to reduce PER and AP loss

3. Smoke Grenade – creates a dense 7×7 cloud that hovers over the affected area for 2 turns. The cloud greatly reduces visibility: if your target is in the cloud or behind the cloud (i.e. there is a smoke cloud between you and your target), your THC is set to 5%, representing zero visibility.

Basically, it affects both parties (if you’re in the cloud, you can’t see anything outside of it either), so it’s best suited for charging melee attackers to generate some cover while they are on the move.

Defense: Goggles, full helmets, or implants (bionic eye with different properties) to increase visibility (thermal vision).

We assume that your THC is THC under perfect conditions. If the visibility is reduced, your THC is reduced with it. So if combat goggles give you visibility of 80% and your THC is 60%, then your adjusted THC is 60*0.8 = 48%

Earth-made Grenades are much more powerful but rare. They are a last resort weapon and you won’t have more than 5-7 such grenades in the entire game. Defending against them is much harder and will require equally rare gadgets.

4. Stasis Field – creates a 3×3 stasis field that lasts 2 turns. You can’t attack those trapped inside and they can’t do anything either. It’s a ‘divide and conquer’ grenade.

Defense: None

5. Brainwave Disruptor – instant spiral effect over 5×5 area that tries to make the affected characters go berserk and attack nearby targets (most likely their own allies).

Defense: Helmet’s mental resistance stat (Neural Shield), we roll to see if you manage to resist the urge to kill nearby people. If you pass the check, you are unaffected.

6. Pulse Grenade – instant pulse over 10×10 area. All energy shields are disabled, all gadgets are fried and can’t be used for the duration of combat. All droids are disabled for 2 turns.