User:Sau226Bot/WikiaImports/:Scalpel

The Scalpel (formerly named BIL Scalpel) is a portable shoulder mounted fire-and-forget missile that only the player can use (as of beta 5). However, as of EA build 8 and up, AI can use this weapon.

Combat & Characteristics
The Scalpel heavily based off of the real life FGM-148 Javelin. The weapon is has a military green color while in Beta 2, it was featured white.

The Scalpel is a fire-and-forget missile launcher. When fired, the missile will be launched out of the launcher directly forward for a few meters, and then the boosters will activate and it will speed towards its target. It holds one missile with one in reserve.

To lock on to a vehicle, scope in using right-click and keep the vehicle on or near the crosshair of the Scalpel without holding left-click. After a few seconds, the Scalpel crosshair will change into a diamond shape around the target. Left-clicking fires the missile, and then it will home in on the target.

When fired at close range at a ground target, the Scalpel missile will move directly to hit. If the target is far, it will fire upwards, before crashing vertically down, or curved when homed in on a vehicle. If fired at an aerial target like a helicopter or a Plane, it will instantly home in on the vehicle. The Scalpel has seemingly unlimited lock-on range.

However, the Scalpel is an unreliable anti-personnel weapon, being unable to lock on to any AI personnel. The only way for this to injure AI is to hit a vehicle with AI in it, have the missile manually locked either near them or onto them (Even then the reticle does not track them) or for AI to be in the explosion radius when it hits its target. Slow motion may help the player lock on a target easier but takes a very long time.



Weaknesses
The Scalpel's flaw is its missile range. While the launcher itself can lock onto anything from a seemingly unlimited range, the missile itself starts to drop after 3-4 seconds after firing. When the missile starts to drop it also loses the ability to track the target, meaning that if the target dodges the missile, the missile might not turn around and instead start falling. Also, at close range, helicopters may be able to dodge the missile, as they will have a high angular displacement that the missile cannot follow.

It is also hard to learn, as most people do not even know that it can lock on to ground vehicles like tanks as well. The low ammo cost and medium damage make it useful for taking down Helicopters, Quadbikes, and Jeeps, but tanks can withstand three Scalpel shots, so it takes your entire ammo collection to destroy one tank. However, from longer ranges, it can take out a tank with two missiles.

Furthermore, as of EA7, all aircraft are now equipped with countermeasures to protect against the Scalpel's missiles, reducing its effectiveness even more. If a Scalpel missile has locked onto an aircraft, the pilot of that aircraft can deploy flares that will distract the missile, therefore the missile will simply not hit the target.

In of EA11, it was changed so the Scalpel no longer had spare ammo, so you only got one shot, whether you had an ammo bag or not. This prevented the tactic of standing next to an ammo bag and spamming it at planes, but made the Scalpel a lot less powerful. The fact that planes will likely deploy flares made it even more of a risk to fire at a plane. This was not well received by the community, however.

In EA13, the Scalpel received another change. This time, it was given back its ability to reload and holds two spare missiles again. However, as a trade-off, the missiles do significantly less damage. Still, the tracking ability makes Scalpel a worthy weapon, as it's one of the few portable homing weapons in the entire game and can still one-shot aircraft, as sometimes they don't use countermeasures. Alternatively they may deploy it too early and Scalpel is able to lock-on when it's far enough from the flares. This balances out the TOW's manual guiding and the AA Gun's limited availability/coverage.

Usage
The Scalpel has lost a significant amount of effectiveness after the introduction of countermeasures, even as a portable AA Weapon. The best usage of the weapon is to surprise a plane coming over a hill or suddenly locking on and firing. Alternately, the Scalpel should be repeatedly fired from a long distance to improve chances of hitting the target. It is effective against longer ranger or slowly moving ground targets as they have no countermeasures. APC however can deploy a smoke grenade to distract it and preventing it from being locked-on.

Code
The Scalpel was a secret weapon in Beta 2. The weapon's appearance was colored white (possibly non-textured or non-colored). In order to get the weapon, you have type the code GIMMEETHEGOODS. This only works in Beta 2.

Trivia

 * The Scalpel is based off of the real life FGM-148 Javelin rocket Launcher.
 * If you lean left, you can see that the Scalpel has no model past a certain point, it can also be seen by setting the FOV to max. This can be seen in versions Beta 5 and under, since bots can't use this weapon at that time.


 * The Scalpel is the first secret weapon in the Ravenfield Betas. It was a secret weapon in Beta 2.
 * The Scalpel is one of the six weapons that had their name changed. It was formerly named BIL Scalpel but in Beta 6 it was renamed as Scalpel.
 * The Scapel had once been able to lock onto a target on the ground by left clicking where the crosshair was pointing, but this has since been removed.
 * A unique pink variant of the Scalpel, the Hydra, exists as a sperate weapon. It has a significantly higher damage potential but it's homing capabilities are significantly worse than Scalpel.

This page was moved from ravenfieldwikia:en:Scalpel. Its edit history can be viewed at User:Sau226Bot/WikiaImports/:Scalpel/edithistory