*Caveira cries*
K-9 units are the one thing missing from the Siege meta, so here’s an idea of how dogs could affect the gameplay.
I picked K-Komando as the CTU for the dog handler operator. The Estonian police unit was founded in the early 90’s to fight the growing threat from organised crime that tried to fill the power vacuum left in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The unit is primarily tasked with high-risk raids and hostage situations. Surprisingly, since it’s creation the unit has used deadly force only once, during the 2011 attack on the Estonian Ministry of Defence.
Operator details
Name: Wolf
Gadget: A police dog (so not a “gadget”)
Abilities:
- The dog can sense enemy operators in some radius, even through walls. The dog will bark and/or growl if an enemy is nearby (but no marker is shown to friendly operators).
- Once the dog detects an enemy operator’s presence, the operator can unleash the dog, who will dash to the (nearest) detected operator and pin them to the ground, dealing 30 damage in the process.
- The dog will take the shortest route to the targeted operator, jumping through blocked doors and windows, but only if they have been weakened beforehand.
- When dog is unleashed without detecting a nearby enemy, it will stay behind to guard an area until put back on leash.
- The dog is rather vulnerable to gunfire, but runs very fast so the enemy will have to react quickly and fire accurately.
- The approaching dog’s footsteps will be relatively quiet and difficult to hear until it’s too late
- The dog won’t be fooled by Alibi’s holograms.
- The dog can sense Caveira even with silent step.
- The dog can spot and mark the objective from behind walls
Limitations:
- The operator only carries a handgun.
- The dog barks/growls whenever it senses an enemy nearby, giving away the dog handler’s position and giving the defender a chance to prepare for an attack.
- The dog increases the operator’s visibility, as it’s trickier to stay concealed when you have a good boy following you around.
- Operator cannot rappel while the dog is on the leash.
Counters:
- The dog is extremely vulnerable to Frost’s welcome mat, Kapkan traps and Lesion mines. Kapkan mines kill him instantly, welcome mat and Lesion mines deal more damage than normal, and must be removed manually by a friendly operator.
- Grzmot mines force the dog to slow down momentarily.
- The dog won’t walk over Bandit electrified wires.
- The dog won’t run through Smoke’s, uh… smoke.
- The dog will take severe damage when dragged through either of the two.
- The dog can cross regular barbed wire, but this will slow down their attack run.
- The dog obviously can’t go through Clash’ shield, and is extremely vulnerable to the tasers.
The dog operator would mostly be a counter to roamers, as objective rooms are likely to be more covered with traps. While it might make life more difficult for roaming defenders, it will also offer opportunities for more creative use of trap gadgets.
Frost for example might wait behind a wall with a welcome mat in place, tricking the dog handler into sacrificing the dog and then blasting him through a soft wall. Kapkan could help Caveira by using his traps to create a large safe roaming area.
I bet Ubisoft developers would absolutely hate implementing a quadruped living thing into the game, but I think this would be a really interesting addition to the meta – not to mention the fact that police dogs are the one widely used asset for CTU’s that’s not yet present in the game.