Does Anyone Use C4?

[RasterOps]

Was it nerfed? I have had crashes on ships that resulted from moving to place the C4 (drop it to save TUs) instead of throwing it. And the few times I have used it to blow holes in walls (reinforced concrete or alien ships) only resulted in destroying doors and junk. It will crack several sections of reinforced concrete but won't even blow a single hole in the adjacent slab of concrete. It seems useless.

Is Hollywood lying to me? Because they seem to use it effectively.

[Skitso]

Yeah, it does feel a bit underwhelming to me too. Never use it.

[LordJulian]

What is this fascinating thing that you call C4? Is it a codename for nerve gas grenade? All I could think of throwing more coherent stuff like plasma grenades and rockets. My men are excellent at turning the tide with well-position grenades, except for a few that bounced back somehow because some entity from the top decided that 42% wasn't enough.

Oh wait, I did remember that one of my guys has a C4 on his backpack, looks bulky and rectangular, certainly not grenade material. Doesn't seem throwable though, and what this? A screen and 9 buttons on it, hmm, I wonder what it does if I press 1 and throw it. Oh wait, out of TUs, gotta wait for next round then!

*Explode!*

Yeah, it's underwhelming alright. Won't use it again.

[RasterOps]

One would think that C4, especially with a shaped charge and especially against human fabrications could penetrate them and perhaps be more effective than most grenades. They have different purposes after all. I really want to blow a hole in that wall!

My best grenade thus far is only Alenium. Ineffective vs. structures.

[Solver]

The blast radius is impressive but it still fails too often to deal enough damage to props.

In config.xml, change IncendiaryDamageBonusMul from 4 to 5. Makes C4 better at blowing up walls.

[RasterOps]

I'll start experimenting. I started by changing the explosive damage. C4 and Plasma Charges have 3 - 4 times the amount of explosives as a typical grenade. Yet C4 does less damage than an Alenium grenade.

Are there other types of damage? Because these charges are meant more for breaching than starting fires...

Increased damage worked... I guess there's no such thing as proximity rings of damage, e.g. more damage at center of blast and less at the edge of the blast. Oh well.

Edited August 19, 2014 by RasterOps

[Solver]

Incendiary is a misnomer, it actually applies to terrain and prop damage. Therefore the numbers on grenades and C4 have different meanings. An alenium grenade does 75 damage and C4 does 80, but C4 is incendiary and therefore should do 320 damage to structures (4x multiplier) while an alenium grenade does that same 75.

With the multiplier set to 5, it should be breaching better.

[Solver]

Increased damage worked... I guess there's no such thing as proximity rings of damage, e.g. more damage at center of blast and less at the edge of the blast. Oh well.

There is, but the damage decrease in the outer rings is fairly mild.

[kabill]

Damage drop-off can be modded, though, if you want less damage away from the centre. It's in config.xml near the top (something like minexplosivedamage, currently set to 0.75 which is the proportion of damage done at the outermost part of the blast).

[RasterOps]

So it would seem structures are very robust to withstand 320 damage. And I assume minexplosivedamage applies to grenades as well. They have a range of 2, so setting minexplosivedamage to 0.5 would make grenades very ineffective, right?

[kabill]

It would make them less effective, although you could increase their AoE or damage to compensate.

[Solver]

I don't think you should touch grenades if you are concerned about breaching.

Grenades are supposed to be, just like in reality, effective against enemy personnel but not capable of blowing holes in a concrete wall. On the other hand, C4 is supposed to be exactly that, a demolition weapon, ideal for making an extra entrance into a building. Which it doesn't do very well now. Does it get better with the multiplier at 5? That setting might need to be changed by default.

[RasterOps]

Well in CE 0.27 (and original) the C4 damage value is 65; even less effective.

• I increased the C4 damage to 80
  
• I increased the Plasma Charge damage to 120
  
• I doubled tripled the weights of the C4 and Plasma Charges
  
• I increased the IncendiaryDamageBonusMul to 5 (is this limited to an integer value?)
  
• I decreased the MinExplosiveDamageLevel to 0.33
  
• I increased by one the range of the Frag, Alenium, Plasma and Fusion grenades to compensate for the decreased damage at range
  

I am really pleased with the C4 results. Don't have the Plasma Charge and will just have to play-test and see how the grenades behave. Although, have I only been modifying the Human weapons and giving them an unfair advantage? In other words, do I need to increase the ranges of the alien grenades? Are these defined in a different file?

Edited August 19, 2014 by RasterOps
Changed weight of C4 and Plasma Charge

[kabill]

Alien grenades are near the bottom of weapons_gc.

[LordJulian]

Ok, I take it that I can use your C4 as a really heavy makeshift heavy grenade that has a wonky timer that's still like playing Russian Roulette with the aliens, only more deadly?

[RasterOps]

Easy Peazie Lemon Squeezie. Thanks guys.

@LordJulian

Well the disadvantages of C4 are:

• It's a little heavier, and twice as big as a single grenade (maybe should increase weight to 3... Done)
  
• It doesn't equip in the grenade slot so you have to pull it from your inventory
  
• It has an "incendiary" type, although I'm not sure that's a disadvantage
  

But otherwise, yeah.

Also, I may be mistaken but it seems when I throw grenades and end my turn the grenades go off at the beginning of the alien turn. When I throw C4, it goes off at the end of the alien turn. And I have no problem with that... Russian Roulette.

Edited August 19, 2014 by RasterOps

[GerbilSchooler]

I use C4 all the time! Why bother going into breech and clear a house with that one pesky redshirt with a plasma pistol that's gonna reaction shot all over your face when you can turn it into a makeshift shooting gallery with your shield guy's best friend, C4!

[ViniJones]

I carry multiple charges onto GC floor. Much like rockets, i dont use them often, but theyre there when I need them.

Use it mostly for UFO door breach in alien bases to break cover or soften up enemies, if I dont need the money and/or do not care for reaction fire.

Leveling a whole building with a scumbag Reaper hiding inside happened only twice, but was fun nonetheless.