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Making C4 more unique.


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In X1 it was practically just a better grenade that took a couple more time units. The low weight made it so there was no reason not to give a stick or two to all of your soldiers.

A simple solution would be making a C4 'secondary weapon' in how the new inventory will work instead of a belt item. A really powerful and more versatile single use grenade might not be too unbalanced, especially when you have to sacrifice a sidearm for it.
This would also limit how much you're able to blow up in a single ground mission. Which has pros and cons of it's own.

Alternatively, changing it so you can't throw it anymore would fix all of the problems it had too. It would still fill the roles of creating breaches, exposing hiding aliens, and knocking down buildings. It just wouldn't also double as a 'heavy' grenade.
It would still be possible to use it offensively by running up to the aliens and dropping it, but you'd probably lose the soldier as well.
I think it would be better as a belt item if this was done. Making it unthrowable and a secondary weapon would be too harsh on it.

Even more alternatively. Removing it entirely and giving C4's destructive abilities, maybe with lower damage, to the grenade launcher would force players to have a potentially very vulnerable soldier if they want the ability to blow up more than a 3x3 square.

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18 hours ago, Rookie said:

In X1 it was practically just a better grenade that took a couple more time units. The low weight made it so there was no reason not to give a stick or two to all of your soldiers.

A simple solution would be making a C4 'secondary weapon' in how the new inventory will work instead of a belt item. A really powerful and more versatile single use grenade might not be too unbalanced, especially when you have to sacrifice a sidearm for it.
This would also limit how much you're able to blow up in a single ground mission. Which has pros and cons of it's own.

Alternatively, changing it so you can't throw it anymore would fix all of the problems it had too. It would still fill the roles of creating breaches, exposing hiding aliens, and knocking down buildings. It just wouldn't also double as a 'heavy' grenade.
It would still be possible to use it offensively by running up to the aliens and dropping it, but you'd probably lose the soldier as well.
I think it would be better as a belt item if this was done. Making it unthrowable and a secondary weapon would be too harsh on it.

Even more alternatively. Removing it entirely and giving C4's destructive abilities, maybe with lower damage, to the grenade launcher would force players to have a potentially very vulnerable soldier if they want the ability to blow up more than a 3x3 square.

While I agree the det packs were a tad too op in the beginning (I never bothered with grenades in OG X-COM, just spammed C4 until I had a steady supply of alien grenades), I'd rather see them balanced through inventory space or weight. Say, a 2x2 or even 3x2 config that is rather weighty.

 

Derp. Missed the post about the new inventory system. Probably the best way to balance it is to have it take up multiple "Belt" slots so that each solder can only cart around one of the things (the poor shmuck is carting around a large pack of explosives, after all).

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Yeah, if we go ahead with the new inventory system then it would make sense to make them a secondary item, yeah - so you're limited to one of them per soldier, and it comes at the cost of carrying something else like a medikit instead. That gives you an excuse (indeed an obligation) to make them properly powerful.

Yeah, ideally I'd like them to work differently to grenades both in terms of power and limitations. The most obvious candidates to make them play differently are:

  • You can stick a timer on C4 when you activate it, so you can delay the detonation by X turns if you want. You can also choose the detonation to be end of the player turn, or start of the next one.
  • C4 can't be thrown like a grenade, it can only be placed on the ground on the same tile as the soldier that used it
  • C4 does a LOT of damage, possibly enough to 1-shot most aliens. This would probably have to gib them and destroy their equipment though.
  • C4 is the only type of weapon able to breach UFO outer hulls

With those advantages and limitations you get a pretty unique piece of equipment. It also allows UFO destructibility but in a more limited way than if you let any weapon breach UFO hulls, and sets up a situation where you're choosing the breaching points and putting timed explosives outside the hull and then storming into the UFO through the new hole you just created (you'd want a detonation at the start of the player turn for this, rather than the end). That might feel a bit more cool and "special-forces" than anything you could do in the original Xenonauts.

It does also allow the requested fun with blowing up aliens - I guess a viable tactic might actually be to scamper up to an alien and put C4 at his feet, then run away (depending on the blast radius of the C4). Similarly if you know a soldier is going to get eaten by Reapers then you can drop C4 at his feet and self-destruct him if you want.

I figure that gives you all the fun bits of playing with high explosives, but fixes the "problems" with the old one by making it a more limited item that you can't spam. Thoughts?

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I guess that a remote or proximity trigger on the C4 is out of the question. Would make it a little too easy to lure aliens into a trap/fight them from out of the line of fire. Whilst I can see it being fun to blow up aliens with demo-charges, I'm definitely more interested in it functioning as a tool for changing the structure of the environment - breaching, bringing down buildings, removing cover. This would put a bit of impetus design of levels so that the player could get creative. Possibly even forming part of a mission spec, e.g. blow the dam to cause a flood, destroy the base to remove evidence, sabotage the ship without apparently causing damage etc

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I agree with the following;

- C4 should take up a larger slot in inventory.

- C4 being placeable in the current player spot OR on adjacent tiles - including on structures/props (as opposed to grenades which should bounce off props) but not thrown. 

- C4 having a high damage/destructibility such that it destroys equipment the closer the alien/object is to the blast centre.

However, if you really consider why C4 is so good its because its mouldable.  Its versatility comes from the fact that you can make a small or big explosion by breaking off parts of it to make smaller explosives.

I was going to suggest making it more of a directional explosion but perhaps that's not niche enough.  So...

Might it be a nice idea if you could control the size of the explosion (perhaps even at the expense of the timer).  A player could set a single tile charge which essentially just knocks a man sized hole in a wall, a 1-tile outward explosion up to some limit, say 6-tile outward explosion. 

This gives the utility to a player that

A) they can control exactly how many tiles are effected, meaning it still has some versatility in tight spaces (such as a breaching a corridor door) with men standing only 2-3 tiles away.

B) you can control just how much damage a tile is going to receive. 

I could imagine the mechanic being 100% damage on the tile the C4 is placed (regardless of size) with 25% less damage per tile moving away.

Visually the damage would be for:

single tile charge

    100

a one tile outward charge

75  75  75

75 100 75

75  75  75

a two tile outward charge

56  56  56   56   56

56  75  75   75   56

56  75  100 75   56

56  75  75   75   56

56  56  56   56   56

 

and so on

 

In this manner you could do sufficient damage to kill an alien but not destroy its equipment if that alien was X tiles away from the explosion centre, you could breach the UFO next the reactor without setting it off, or conversely you could blow the sweet daylight out of everything.

I would couple this mechanic with a C4 charge value.  Lets say it has an ammo value of 5.  Meaning you could make 5 man sized holes or a single 5 tile outward explosion with one block of it. 

Intuitive and niche.

 

 

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  • 1 year later...

I think only combat engineers with special training in demolitions should be able to use shaped charges / C4, and it shouldn't be able to be thrown - I know some devices can be jury rigged with timers in real life, but as the OP stated it throws out game mechanics a bit. I think it should take a lot of time to apply it properly to a door or weak point on a structure before retreating for the timer / remote to activate it.

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  • 1 month later...

I like Belmakors suggestion for basic C4. Short range remote detonation could be a research option as well as shaped charges that damage mainly in a cone from the target tile etc. Research further into demolitions for a portable laser drill to breach in an even more controlled/safer manner. Anything to add more interest to blowing things up and sticking your head in the resulting hole..

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So an update on this - the C4 is already in the game, and it's now a "remote charge". Basically you lay it in an adjacent tile and you get a detonator that allows you to trigger it at any time during your turn.

The idea is that you can lay it up against the wall / UFO hull, set up your men, pass the turn, then trigger the explosives at the start of your next turn and charge in with everyone having full TU. Although I'm sure people will find plenty of other uses for it :P

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