The grenade launcher

[Mr.Xia]

I never found a good use of the grenade launcher in X2, considering that I already had the satchel charges for breaching entry and the MARs to smash past walls as a cheaper alternative. I used it  to reveal enemies from buildings and break obstacles, but the inaccuracy fails in that area. As a direct fire weapon it deals considerably worse damage than grenades, and its range is terrible, leaving its utility questionable.  I would like to know if anyone else finds the grenadier role effective in their game.

Also, its the only weapon that does not scale with the soldier's Turn units(stays at 24/34 TU)? Is that a feature or a bug? I played GOG v1.19 for reference

The rocket launcher in Xenonauts 1 served as a long-range can opener, able to deal explosive destruction from afar with the drawbacks of a single shot. I wonder why its replaced by this?

[doubleskulls]

I use the Mars's rocket launcher only. No grenadiers. If I didn't have Mars for a mission I'd take one, but I don't think I need to have 2 RPGs in the squad. 

[Raffik]

For breaches I use either the grenadier, MARS or the C4 (in cases where I know where the alien is hiding) to break the wall and attack a building with assault soldiers.

What I´d love to see though, would be satchel charges (lighter than C4, ballistic damage, proximity fuse ideally), that would make the game much more fun - to set traps ot to cover parts of the map, where Xenonaut forces are weaker.

For breaches I use either the grenadier, MARS or the C4 (in cases where I know where the alien is hiding) to break the wall and attack a building with assault soldiers.

What I´d love to see though, would be Claymore mine (lighter than C4, ballistic damage, proximity fuse ideally and a short destructive cone in the front arc), that would make the game much more fun - to set traps ot to cover parts of the map, where Xenonaut forces are weaker.

[doubleskulls]

Proximity mines and timed bombs would be fun to have.  

I generally rely on doors to get into buildings. Its great to open them, shoot, close the door, blocking LOS. The alien AI seems that is does not remember what they have seen, and only respond to what they can see now. So staying out of sight is important.  

[Paulo Brito]

I use the Grenadiers early game with smoke rounds to turn enemies that I need to capture unconscious. Pitty the grenade launcher don't receive updated ammo.

[Mr.Xia]

Claymores/Proximity bombs would be useful for base defense missions, When aliens like to mow down my troops in death funnels(doors) during UFO crashes, we should give them a taste of their own medicine.

Usually I require explosives to take down obstacles and buildings to give my troops a clear line of sight to snipe the aliens out. In X1, the rocket launcher serves as an imperative to flush out them out whilst my troops have the advantage of range and cover to pick off the aliens one by one. The launcher in X2 is.....underwhelming to say the least. I had hoped it at least would lob over fences and buildings to at least give me some utility in its use.

[bonerstorm]

4 hours ago, Paulo Brito said:

I use the Grenadiers early game with smoke rounds to turn enemies that I need to capture unconscious. Pitty the grenade launcher don't receive updated ammo.

Actually it does. I believe it gets +25% damage boost with Alenium Explosives engineering task and another 25% with fusion. My grenadier usually smokes sectons in one hit... which isn't saying much, but when there are a bunch of them packed together it's very nice.

Regardless of the damage, I use my grenadier to destroy cover and concealment. At the front of my dropship I always have two MARS and one grenadier. If the dropship lands next to a building, the grenadier mouseholes it and everybody else smokes what he reveals.

What the grenadier is mostly good for is clearing the way for snipers and rifles and mars to get a clear shot. Explosives are extremely under-powered in this game, but I get a LOT of mileage out of my grenadier - especially with the tech upgrades to damage. He's not the best at direct damage, but if you want a mob a block away standing like a doofus in front of a wall to get suppressed and lose all his cover - the grenadier is your guy.

Also MARS rocket launcher is a trap. Never use it. Accuracy is never good enough and damage is too low... while the cannon attachment will reliably one-shot almost every enemy in the game (especially when upgraded). And it won't vaporize your LOOT. At least with the grenadier you can switch to pistol and smoke grenades and flashbangs when it's time to clear a UFO.

[bonerstorm]

Oh yeah and hot tip: if you want to delete an alien's cover... shoot IN FRONT of the cover so you don't get the accuracy penalty.

[Conductiv]

I never really got much mileage out of the HEVY, as stated in previous comments by others, its the accuracy that hurts me most of all...

cover clearing you can use the MARS missiles or demolition charges, both are effective tools, and the mars can take shots with a much lower chance of instantly exploding then a grenadier can.
for safely hitting enemies with explosives well the basic frag grenade line is actually quite good...for the weight of the HEVY you have 6 frags on any of your strong soldiers that have 100% chance to connect up to a decent distance, and unlike the heavy they can be deployed indirectly making it much safer to explode target with them.

[bonerstorm]

4 hours ago, Conductiv said:

I never really got much mileage out of the HEVY, as stated in previous comments by others, its the accuracy that hurts me most of all...

cover clearing you can use the MARS missiles or demolition charges, both are effective tools, and the mars can take shots with a much lower chance of instantly exploding then a grenadier can.
for safely hitting enemies with explosives well the basic frag grenade line is actually quite good...for the weight of the HEVY you have 6 frags on any of your strong soldiers that have 100% chance to connect up to a decent distance, and unlike the heavy they can be deployed indirectly making it much safer to explode target with them.

But you can't throw three grenades to the other side of the block from one guy in one turn. HEVY is much more economical with TU, which is critical if you've got a wide building and you want three giant holes in it all at once.

Some of the accuracy annoyance is mitigated by having a soldier with high ACC. The rest can be mitigated by aiming with a wall as a backstop so, even if you miss the alien, you'll hit the wall behind him and blast him anyway.

[bifohe6676]

I agree with most things said here already.

If the thing wasn't so freakishly heavy (no pun intended) eating up so much carry-capacity it might have been be worthwhile, but at the moment I don't see any use for it outside niche applications or just using it for the heck of it.

Almost anything it can do, something else can do better:

• normal frags grenades are better at fragging/weaking groups because you can lob them over obstacles in an arc instead of dealing with direct LOS
• normal smoke grenades are better if precise covering of a vulnerable soldier is important, again because of the indirect arc
• MARS is better at opening walls, both with driving and firing rockets, I had never issues with its accuracy because even a rocket-miss will often breach the walls you wanted anyway because of the huge blast range
• soldier guns and the MARS cannon are better at pure damage output against single targets, especially accelerated and laser weapons
• you have to be (even more compared to guns) super careful to not have missed HEVY shots hit your own soldiers or their cover, which means the grenadier always has to be at the front where you rather need fast attack/overwatch/heavy armor type soldiers

So far I can think of only 2 situations where a HEVY would shine compared to other options:

1. Cover your retreat with massive amounts of smoke by firing multiple smoke nades with a grenadier in 1 turn thanks to the fixed TU firing cost
2. Chip away at tight groups of enemies in terror maps (Reapers that just created zombies), the urban terror maps seem to be a bit more suitable for this with their LOS being pretty open shooting across streets

That being said a MARS could theoretically do both situations better if you would specc it for it (take the smoke launcher option, use rockets on enemies instead against their cover), but considering how good the offensive weapon systems on the MARS are I don't think you want to sacrifice using them for that.

EDIT: But then again a MARS is 250K and for that price you can get 25 expandable Rookies with a HEVY each, so there is that

Edited July 26, 2023 by bifohe6676

[doubleskulls]

2 hours ago, bifohe6676 said:

EDIT: But then again a MARS is 250K and for that price you can get 25 expandable Rookies with a HEVY each, so there is that

I appreciate you are being humorous, but its easy to forget, but soldiers and vehicles cost maintenance. Each soldier is $10k pcm , and the MARS is $5k. So although the initial recruitment costs are lower the ongoing maintenance is $250k pcm for the rookies (ignoring costs for living quarters) vs. $5k for one MARS. Even having to rebuild the MARS once per month its still cheaper. So even on the cost basis MARS is still better  

 

[bifohe6676]

On 7/26/2023 at 8:54 AM, doubleskulls said:

I appreciate you are being humorous, but its easy to forget, but soldiers and vehicles cost maintenance. Each soldier is $10k pcm , and the MARS is $5k. So although the initial recruitment costs are lower the ongoing maintenance is $250k pcm for the rookies (ignoring costs for living quarters) vs. $5k for one MARS. Even having to rebuild the MARS once per month its still cheaper. So even on the cost basis MARS is still better  

 

I was being humorous, thanks for the kind words, but this made me curious about the actual math, so I did some calculations.

Let's first pretend you lose any and all your new units a month made of in-game 30 days (aka. an average Iron Man run with the RNG gods )

With rookies costing 10K at recruitment each, with 10K upkeep per month, and a MARS costing 250K with 5K upkeep, a single MARS in a month costs the same as r many rookies for a single month:

r Rookies * 10K + r Rookies * 10K = 1 MARS * 5K + 1 MARS * 250K ;
solve for r

Solution: Hiring r = 12.75 rookies costs the same as a single MARS for that single month considering upkeep and recruitment cost and everybody getting killed.

So yeah, building a new MARS every month will cost you the same as throwing ~13 rookies into meatgrinder suicide missions every month, that is more than an entire squad wipe.

Now looking at the other extreme, if you never lose anybody (= cheapest scenario), let us look at how many t = days you can get for the same cost in rookies compared to a single MARS, aka. when do the costs of r Rookies become the same and then more than a single MARS:

For r = number of Rookies with 10K one-time recruitment cost and 10K upkeep per month, you will hit the point of same cost of a single MARS with 250K build-cost and 5K upkeep at:

t * r Rookies * (10K / 30 days) + r Rookies * 10K = t * 1 MARS * (5K / 30 days) + 1 MARS * 250K ;
solve for t days for given r Rookies

at r = 1 rookie we get t = 1440 days of a single MARS

at r = 2 rookies we get t = 460 days of a single MARS

at r = 3 rookies we get t = 264 days of a single MARS (your typical endgame would start here, see note below)

at r = 4 rookies we get t = 180 days of a single MARS (current state of the Early Access campaign, see note below)

at r = 5 rookies we get t ≈ 133 days of a single MARS

at r = 6 rookies we get t ≈ 104 days of a single MARS

at r = 7 rookies we get t ≈ 83 days of a single MARS

at r = 8 rookies we get t ≈ 68 days of a single MARS

at r = 9 rookies we get t ≈ 56 days of a single MARS

at r = 10 rookies we get t ≈ 47 days of a single MARS

at r = 11 rookies we get t = 40 days of a single MARS

at r = 12 rookies we get t ≈ 34 days of a single MARS

(our earlier solution of r = 12.75 rookies sits here at t = 30 days)

at r = 13 rookies we get t ≈ 29 days of a single MARS

To summarize:

1.) only when you reach suicidal-rookie-squad-levels where everybody dies every month you get the same costs as losing a MARS every month

2.) losing a MARS unit is like losing 3-4 soldiers in money for a typical campaign (assuming a finished endgame will typically start at ~270 days, because the Devs said the currently 180 days available is 2/3 of the finished game).

3.) assuming a typical campaign, the 250K build-cost is the majority of a MARS' total-cost, and the small upkeep (even if you would add living space costs) is the absolute majority of soldiers' costs but still tiny compared to most purchases in-game including the MARS, so the costs for losing rookies is extremely low compared to losing MARS units (the real cost of losing veterans is of course in their lost skills).

Now the real question becomes: How many rookies are worth a single MARS in ACTUAL TACTICAL ADVANTAGE during a battle?

[doubleskulls]

There are a couple of extra dimensions could be factored into the analysis

• Mars has a much better survivability than any one rookie due to better armour/HP. 
• If Mars is injured it fully heals immediately, unlike a rookie, so its more available to participate in missions (injured rookies could sit in medical for a month, being paid whilst they do it, the lazy sods ) 
• When a rookie dies you'll often lose equipment - e.g. armour. 
• There is theoretically a one off cost for other equipment for a rookie - e.g. laser rifle, but we could possibly write that off against the upgrade costs for the MARS. 
• MARS is generally tactically better than a rookie, so is likely to result in fewer casualties in a mission its on, and a higher chance of success (i.e. 8 experienced soldiers + 1 rookie are worse than 8 experienced soldiers + MARS)

On veteran / iron man, I probably lose less than one soldier a mission. Generally I think Mars is worth it, although now I'm in the later EA game, it is starting to lag behind in terms of survivability. If I don't take it, I'm taking a Colonel too, and I'm only not taking them because I do really care if they die. If someone has to die I'd prefer to spend $125k to replace MARS than train up a private again!

[bifohe6676]

4 hours ago, doubleskulls said:

There are a couple of extra dimensions could be factored into the analysis

• Mars has a much better survivability than any one rookie due to better armour/HP. 
• If Mars is injured it fully heals immediately, unlike a rookie, so its more available to participate in missions (injured rookies could sit in medical for a month, being paid whilst they do it, the lazy sods ) 
• When a rookie dies you'll often lose equipment - e.g. armour. 
• There is theoretically a one off cost for other equipment for a rookie - e.g. laser rifle, but we could possibly write that off against the upgrade costs for the MARS. 
• MARS is generally tactically better than a rookie, so is likely to result in fewer casualties in a mission its on, and a higher chance of success (i.e. 8 experienced soldiers + 1 rookie are worse than 8 experienced soldiers + MARS)

On veteran / iron man, I probably lose less than one soldier a mission. Generally I think Mars is worth it, although now I'm in the later EA game, it is starting to lag behind in terms of survivability. If I don't take it, I'm taking a Colonel too, and I'm only not taking them because I do really care if they die. If someone has to die I'd prefer to spend $125k to replace MARS than train up a private again!

Oh yeah no doubt, I agree with you on a MARS being quite the mighty thing to always bring (if you can afford to buy one) like I said in my first post, but putting all those actual tactical considerations into neat linear theoretical equations is not something you can just whip up like you can with the pure budget cost

That is the kind of thing where you need a hundred, if not a thousand battles to analyze

All I wanted to test with the calculations was where we stand on losing a MARS units from a purely budget point of view compared to expendable rookies with only infinite starter gear (aka zero extra budget or alien materials spent on them) acting as some kind of kamikaze reckless HEVY grenadiers.

The high relative cost of losing even one MARS surprised me, I felt like it was high before I ran the math but it seems it is even higher than I thought!

But I don't think this means that the HEVY in its current state is viable as a MARS replacement, because as we all seem to agree the actual tactical value of a MARS is higher still, so the lower costs of HEVY grenadiers alone is not enough to outweight that.

[Raffik]

On 7/25/2023 at 8:53 PM, bonerstorm said:

Actually it does. I believe it gets +25% damage boost with Alenium Explosives engineering task and another 25% with fusion. My grenadier usually smokes sectons in one hit... which isn't saying much, but when there are a bunch of them packed together it's very nice.

Regardless of the damage, I use my grenadier to destroy cover and concealment. At the front of my dropship I always have two MARS and one grenadier. If the dropship lands next to a building, the grenadier mouseholes it and everybody else smokes what he reveals.

What the grenadier is mostly good for is clearing the way for snipers and rifles and mars to get a clear shot. Explosives are extremely under-powered in this game, but I get a LOT of mileage out of my grenadier - especially with the tech upgrades to damage. He's not the best at direct damage, but if you want a mob a block away standing like a doofus in front of a wall to get suppressed and lose all his cover - the grenadier is your guy.

Also MARS rocket launcher is a trap. Never use it. Accuracy is never good enough and damage is too low... while the cannon attachment will reliably one-shot almost every enemy in the game (especially when upgraded). And it won't vaporize your LOOT. At least with the grenadier you can switch to pistol and smoke grenades and flashbangs when it's time to clear a UFO.

flechette rounds for the grenade launcher would be nice as well, to have another usage option for the grenadier - CQC combat (single shot, a little more effective than shotgun, with range of 16 tiles)

[A_Magical_Potato]

Overall* as a xcom/x1 vet, I miss my rocket launcher. The only role my HEVY is supposed to do is knock down cover at range and it just doesn't do that well. Ideally the outer ring if the squad is the SH/SG/AR guys supported by the MG and RF in the center of the formation. The grenadier is supposed to knock down cover for the formation from the center but im finding it sorely lacks both the range and accuracy to do so. They don't have a shredding effect against amour they do bonus damage to heavy units due to penetration but that's about it. Overall I find they are less a support unit and more of an assault unit that has support capabilities.

So far ive found most success by having the GL and MG anchoring my wings and the RF in the center picking off units with SH and SGs taking point and ARs filling the gaps.

Edited July 30, 2023 by A_Magical_Potato

[GreyICE]

What's not to love?  It does similar damage to the pistol, takes a buttload of time units, never upgrades (even when other grenades get upgraded) and doesn't arc so it can just go flying past aliens (which is funny because direct hits barely do damage). 

Oh right here's a playtip - delete the Grenadier loadout immediately.   Anything you can do with it you can do with thrown grenades too, and you'll have a real weapon.  Gets outright embarassing when the plasma grenades hit for 75 and the grenade launcher is still hitting for 35 because... reasons. 

Just needs to be rethought entirely. 

[happystrawberry1]

It's not even a grenade launcher, its a lousy rocket launcher disguised as a grenade launcher. What kind of grenade launcher doesn't arc?

[bonerstorm]

 

7 hours ago, GreyICE said:

never upgrades (even when other grenades get upgraded)

Like I said, it upgrades +25% for each of the two techs. It just doesn't change the icon.

7 hours ago, happystrawberry1 said:

It's not even a grenade launcher, its a lousy rocket launcher disguised as a grenade launcher. What kind of grenade launcher doesn't arc?

What kind of arc are you thinking about? IRL 40mm grenade launchers will arc, but they're direct fire weapons. You don't shoot them over walls or up in the air unless you're looking to get court-martialed for war crimes or friendly fire gross negligence.

[Mr.Xia]

13 hours ago, happystrawberry1 said:

It's not even a grenade launcher, its a lousy rocket launcher disguised as a grenade launcher. What kind of grenade launcher doesn't arc?

If the launcher actually arcs I would have said "Oh yeah, this actually doesn't suck", a utility gun that needs the finesse of being able to hit things while behind cover would be nice.

Then again, grenades do their jobs equally well, I only see the static 24/34 TU as a benefit to the launcher(if the newest updates didn't change it), and I still am an advocate to return the X1's rocket launcher, at least it serves a purpose of clearing obstacles safely from distance.

[happystrawberry1]

7 hours ago, bonerstorm said:

What kind of arc are you thinking about? IRL 40mm grenade launchers will arc, but they're direct fire weapons. You don't shoot them over walls or up in the air unless you're looking to get court-martialed for war crimes or friendly fire gross negligence.

This is a video game, not IRL. Give the thing an arc. I find myself not using the thing at all and just having a high strength guy filled up with grenades. I get much more use out of that trooper over a grenade launcher.

Edited July 31, 2023 by happystrawberry1
Fat fingered

[kingsword]

IRL nobody would point the thing so that it goes off to 3KM away instead of hitting the stall. It's still the most useless weapon in the game aside from the obvious meme stuff like knifes. I'm amazed that it survived until now with no changes. I hope the design team isn't happy with how it works.

[Raffik]

I think it would be great, if the grenade launcher had an arch for indirect fire support for explosive rounds (also timed rounds with explosion in the next turn would be cool) and direct fire for flechette rounds.

Also the game could have an RPG/RL (like in X1 and in the UFO/XCOM series) with direct fire and multiple types of rockets (basic HE with kinetic, incendiary and advanced with thermal damage)

Edited July 31, 2023 by Raffik

[bifohe6676]

4 hours ago, kingsword said:

IRL nobody would point the thing so that it goes off to 3KM away instead of hitting the stall. It's still the most useless weapon in the game aside from the obvious meme stuff like knifes. I'm amazed that it survived until now with no changes. I hope the design team isn't happy with how it works.

Devs said it is in a very rough state at the moment (V1.28) and they will overhaul/balance it in a future patch.