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I understand the reluctance of making the blaster launcher part of the game. Of all the games I've ever played, the blaster launcher in X-Com is perhaps the most glaring example of inherent imbalance created by an overpowered weapon. For those that haven't played the OG, the blaster launcher is something you get from the aliens roughly around midgame. It's somewhat difficult to research the launcher and the ammo unless you have a specialty base,but the end result is nothing short of pure death in a neat little package. It's a heavy weapon that you can reload one shot at a time. You launch the blaster bomb from the launcher and then set waypoints for the bomb (it's actually a guided missile). You can send it in circles, up and down, left to right, whatever. When it makes contact with a solid object, it creates a huge explosion that dwarfs any other manportable weapon in the game. It has a radius of 11 tiles, and an unarmored xcom agent can easily die from the explosion in the 11th tile, as it does about 90 damage at that point. At the impact point, it does 200 damage, which is only 30 points less than the craft mounted version and 60 points more than the tank version. It's enough to peirce the hull of any alien ship. It's a big enough explosion that it will kill anything in any room in an alien base. It will wipe clean the contents of any human made structure. It's cheap to manufacture (90,000$ and 1200 man hours) and the ammo is also inexpensive (8,000$, 3 elerium, and 220hours). It was easy to abuse because you could equip four or five squaddies with launchers and about 5 shots apiece and proceed to simply destroy everything on the map, often without even leaving your insertion craft if you were careful. You could peirce the top of a battleship, then send in followup shots through the hole it made until there was nothing left inside the battleship. No wonder Goldhawk doesn't want this in the game, right? Here's my suggestion: There does exist legitamite tactical use for a blaster launcher (peircing hulls for instance, or clearing the LZ around your insertion craft in a bad terror mission) The problem is, how to balance the weapon. First: The aliens get them too. I know everyone who's played the OG has experianced a blaster bomb going into their skyranger on insertion because some damn muton got an interrupt. Second: Limit the number of waypoints. I think 3 is a good number (the original had 9). Third: It's a one shot weapon. No reloads. Fourth: Cut the explosion radius to 5 tiles. Keep the impact damage high, but the splash damage drops off geometricly instead of linearly. At the 5th tile, it's about the same damage as a grenade. Fifth: Make the launcher so heavy that the agent who carries it can't carry anything else and still fire it. And last: Make it simply too complex to manufacture. You can use what you find in the field only. You still have to research it. This last step alone will severly limit the number of launcher uses available (since you can't keep weapons found in missions). Thoughts?

I started this treads to discuss the BL (Blaster Laucher) and potentially find a way to make it a viable mod in Xenonauts. BL was used in UFO as a mean to avoid long missions and to quicken the game in end game. It also helped to debunk hidden alies by killing them or removing every cover in an area. It's drawback were not many since it destroyed almost every map tile, aliens and object it did encounter. It was counterbalanced by it's own strenght wich was destruction. As such The BL was more balanced in TFTD since most salvagable items were near each others in key area. Such area were command center, cockpit, engine and computer core. The tiles were also dangerous since they could detonate a BL prematurely. The use of a BL has to be weighted a lot more than in X-Com. Extensive use of a BL made poor salvage and the elerium cost outweighed gains made in several ufo ground mission. The terrain design was also clearly intended to hamper it's use (like in the TFTD missions) and i suspect some randomness was included in it's travel path. Such limitation were not present in X-Com and brought abuse since UFO and base layout enabled their use without much drawback as long as you got ammo. While clearly a overpowered weapon, the BL did fasten the end game play while the last research was made. Please be constructive in your comments. Ideas: Less Waypoints Destructible warhead Turn base movement TU used to move Destroy salvagable items when used Persistant damage in a large zone Heavy construction cost and/or rare components. Lower Score Lower reputation with country hosting mission Different Destruction pattern like Fan (V), lines. Wire guided so when changing direction there is a chance the cable snap, making the missile go rogue. Weird explosion shape like a fractal. Wire guided so has a max range before exploding or loosing control. Disposable drone version. Explosive version is blind. After a quick reply from Chris, it is confirmed that waypoints are troublesome. As such, here is a basic concept of the weapon as I see it: The BL spawn a unit named [blasterBomb] wich is controlled as a player unit. Ennemy units react to [blasterBomb] as they would with any player unit. I think an average % to hit would be good. When it is destroyed, it explode in a large radius, destroying object and tiles alike. Persitant "radiation" damage could be implemented in the zone affected. The destruction of the [blasterBomb] is trigerred by the player, [blasterBomb] destruction by the ennemy or end of turn. Using the BL means a score penalty when the bomb explode (unit killed). To enable the self destruction of the [blasterBomb], the unit could have several properties like low healt and bleeding damage. The unit should be blind. Time units should enable it to travel far enough not to kill the shooter and close enough to require soldier placement. Probability of self destruction each time a command is issued after the first one. Construction cost: Around what is found on a small intact UFO. Computer of some kind, Fuel, engine. Stats: Damage : 200 TU : 120 Healt : 30 Armor : 0 Bleeding damage : 30 Blast radius : 20 Persistant damage : 10 dmg Duration : 100 turns