It’s not used very often, but it does have niche uses for keeping a Private you’re mentoring close.
The other use I’ve found is, as SL, being able to locate whoever’s carrying your radio-phone/BRUTE/Breaching Charges. However, it uses the mini-battery which only has 6(?) or so uses before the battery is dead. Kinda sux, it’s nichely-used so why not give it a real battery. If people are moving around then you need at least 2-3 uses to triangulate where someone is.
Battery just kinda sucks to use. Should be higher, especially given how little it’s used
Honestly, there’s not even a reason to make it more– I’d consider this QoL.
Talk about balance, but like, we have infinite trackers on SLs/FTLs/XO/COs nowadays, so is this really valid? Doesn’t really mess up the balance either, because you can still run out of the energy, it’s just more uses.
Even going as far as just removing the need for a charge, what would be the balance consequence? I can have an easier time tracking my metabuddy without using metacomms or any comms at all to find them?
Given you gotta take up some of your storage space with an item that’s purely meant for finding one specific person, I can’t imagine it being stupidly busted if you could use it repeatedly, even if it’s just on a short cooldown instead.
They shouldn’t take any charge at all. Massively overtuned (e.g. overnerfed) for something that it wouldn’t matter whatsoever if you could use it indefinitely.
I tried to use it once with a friend who has a lot of trouble keeping track of me when we play (“everything just blends together, I can’t tell the difference between people”), and we got… 2 uses? 3 uses out of it? I hadn’t used it until then and unfortunately discovered it was genuinely worthless.
I’m all for this. Make it infinite, or make it an arrow like GoonStations’ handheld security tracker for their gear.
Failing that, I wouldn’t be opposed to some sort of sci-fi ‘Recharges as you move’ deal. Slap some fancy sounding ten-dollar words such as: ‘Automatic mechanically initialized piezoelectric based accumulator for low-level currents’, and before you know it, you’ve bullshitted your way into the writing room of any 2000s-era sci-fi/spy TV show by means of contextually incorrect usage of words, by consulting an onomasticon, without secondly referring to a linguistic-related lexiconal concordancy.
It’s just not that useful for what it seems to be for, except locating a corpse. For example, if you really like to roll rocket spec, you can leave your PDT/L watch with Req, and tell them to put them in the bag with your rockets in it- boom, now you can find your rockets on FOB even if it’s full of crap and disorganized.
we do not need to worry about this thing being unbalanced - It is perfectly fine if people can use it infinitely, the game will not burn down, there will not be crazy strategies that suddenly flip marines to a 95% win ratio
