All right. As i think everyone knows, the hand grenade upgrade sucks. It's hardly ever used, and it's pretty much redundant. So here's my idea.
Incendiary hand grenades.
You remember when you first played NS, and you no doubt though to yourself, "gee, a flamethrower would be awesome here." The idea of a flamethrow is on the "do not suggest" list in the I&S because it's so cool.
Now, if i recall correctly, the reason that a flamethrower isn't in NS is because they couldn't make one that was both good looking, effected by the area around it, AND easy on the processor. When i say effected by the area around it, i mean that in a big room, the flame spreads out, and doesn't last as long. In a small area, such as a vent, the flame would project much more, and and keep burning longer.
I don't have a whole lot of programming knowledge so please correct me if i'm wrong here. If you are shooting a stream of fire, and you want it to alter it's behavior according to it's surroundings, then it has to re-calculate it's rate of expansion constantly, throughout the entire stream. That would be very processor intensive, and it's understandable that a flamethrower isn't in the halflife engine.
But, if you had a hand grenade spew fire everywhere, it'd only have to calculate once. That'd take a lot less resources. Then it would satisfy all conditions set by the NS team, since it'd look good, be "real-time" fire, and be low-usage.
And really, would you miss the current hand grenade? When is the last time you used one, anyway? The gl does the same job, except it's better. True, hand grenades are sooner on the tech tree, but only if your resources aren't tight, and you aren't researching an advanced armory. In early game, before you have an advance armory, your res is tight, and if you're not upgrading you armory then you should be.
Okay, so those are all the reasons for changing hand grenades to incendiary hand grenades. I'm suggesting this here, instead of the I&S, for two reasons. First, meaning no disrespect to the forum mods, but i think the community here is much better. Second, i remember a thread about a new idea for the fade's blink. I also remember a lot of feedback on that thread, because there was a mod of it, a clear example. Since i don't have the programming knowledge or tools to make an incendiary grenade, i thought i might throw the idea out, and see if someone can whip up an example, THEN we take it over to the I&S and hold it up for all to see (just to prove how cool TLM is.)
Plus, how cool would it be to should "BURN, FATTY!!! and throw your fire grenade onto the gorge hiding behind the oc's. Then you'd get to watch him scream in agony, as his life withers away before his very eyes. Poor gorgie.