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Priming Explosives?


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I was enjoying your excellent game, and suddenly I came upon a problem. I wanted to throw (but in this case pass) a grenade to an agent in a more advantageous position, however there was no way to share the grenade without it exploding.

In a nutshell, I thought Id throw out a recommendation for an option to not prime an explosive when throwing it. Much thanks. :)

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You make a good point. I remember that in the original game you could throw stuff between soldiers (Medkits, grenades, and even weapons). I don't remember it ever making a huge tactical difference, but having to drop weapons and move out of the way in order for other soldiers to pick them up in Xenonauts is kind of a pain. There are potential scenarios where it would be of great help (tossing a shotgun to the guy who just opened a door on a reaper) but I fear it could be hard to implement.

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I can't imagine why it would. There is already something in the engine for tossing grenades and having them land on the correct tile, and everything already has an image for lying on the ground. It seems like it should be fairly simple to be able to throw equipment in the same was as a grenade, have it land on the ground, and then get the other guy to pick it up.

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I don't think it would really extend the range of a grenade toss, you'd still need one soldier within throw-able range of the grenade's final destination. I could see how you could take advantage of this by having one centrally positioned guy with an inventory full of grenades feeding them to everyone else. Whether that's really gamey and overpowered is debatable though, I think throwing a grenade to a fellow soldier would take just as much TUs as throwing it normally so it would still occupy the majority of that soldier's turn. If you want to waste a large portion of your squad's turn for passing one grenade (which isn't that much of an alien killer in itself) from the rear to the front line then I think that's fine. I don't really see an OP strategy developing around it. Also, making catching a grenade cost just as much TUs as throwing it would totally remove any possibility of grenade chaining.

Edited by BuzuBuzu
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The difference between how grenades worked in the original makes it less useful, in the original you needed TU's to both prime AND throw the grenade, the advantage you gained from relaying a grenade was that you could use a soldier that was out of range to use his TU's to prime it then the frontline guy would only need TU's to throw the grenade and not prime & throw.

But since you don't need TU's to prime grenades in Xenonauts then it makes it less useful, I haven't actually tested if you can actually do this with explosive grenades though in xenonauts as they do land on the ground, do they show up as an inventory item or are they a non-item entity after they have been thrown?

I could see a mod doing this but I don't see the need as high enough to warrant official devtime from other more important things.

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Just to point out, you don't need TUs in Xeno to prime grenades because priming and throwing are part of a combined operation. If priming were separate to throwing then you'd need TUs to prime and TUs throw. In EU1994 the difference in TU cost between priming and throwing was like night and day, and it was more TU efficent to designate one solider grenade primer and pass the grenade up the line.

It would be TU efficent to do that today. Let's say that unlike EU1994, priming a grenade costs as much as throwing one and both are TU inexpensive in comparison to any other percent-based task, say, 15% each. My point men are the most TU senstive out of all of my soliders - I need to maximise TU efficency because they are at most risk. As I move back through the line of resistance to any soliders in the rear echelon, their TU efficency isn't as important because they are at a reduced level of risk in comparison to point men. It costs 30% of a soliders TUs to prime and throw a grenade, and almost a third of all TUs is not an insignficant number, especially when the solider has a relatively low number of TUs to start with. But if another solider can bear the cost of priming a grenade and pass it on, then the point man benefits in terms of a higher TU efficency, which is more important. 15% verses 30% can be the difference between a solider priming a grenade and throwing it, or a solider priming a grenade and looking like an idiot as he doesn't have quite enough TU left to throw one.

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I like the way JA2 did it. You could toss anything to a teammate, but catching it would require a tiny amount of TU's.

If the teammate didn't have the TU's, it would land at his feet... or hit him.

Which was fun when you throw a spare clip or grenade and it hits the other guy in the head.

It also created interesting scenarios - such as a weapon jamming and you using a guy standing near to toss his sidearm or shotty to the first guy

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I remember modding the game so you could prime the grenades in an early version of Xenonauts. I had it that you could prime them for one or two turns, so you could indefinitely prime the grenade for 2 turns so it wouldn't blow up, simulating the feeling of clutching a grenade to prevent it exploding.

With that system, I think you could throw it without priming it. Can't remember.

Problem was, you couldn't keep them in a quick slot if you did it that way, so you couldn't hold a rifle at the same time (not to say shooting with a rifle is easy when you're priming a grenade). Maybe you can in this version.

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