The grenade launcher

[bonerstorm]

18 hours ago, Mr.Xia said:

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.

16 hours ago, happystrawberry1 said:

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.

Why are you guys trying to shoot behind cover? If you fire one square in front of the cover, there's no penalty and you delete the cover.

All the weapons have much higher effective ranges than the game gives them credit for, which is quite annoying for verisimilitude but I guess it's unavoidable with the style of game.

16 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.

It's not that bad if you know how to work it. It's a medium-range cover deleter, long-range wall mouseholer, and all-around wraith-cloak-disabler.

If you spot a wraith in a building beyond the jogging range of your shottys, grenadier uses one shot to blast the wall... another to disable the cloak... and probably has another shot after that to make sure it's suppressed (which regular frags don't do for some annoying reason). Then your snipers, LMGs or MARS can exterminate without the worry that you'll end the turn with it alive/unsuppressed so it can one-shot two of your guys with pinpoint accuracy or kill three of them with one well-aimed plasma grenade.

The damage, though, is totally pitiful and needs to be buffed. Like I said, it gets a lot better when you get the grenade upgrades... but it really should do 60 avg damage from the jump.

16 hours ago, Raffik said:

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)

What you're describing is a mortar. That is indeed something that would be cool to have.

Someone in another thread asked about whether they could combine flashbangs with smoke grenades... and I was like: "You mean tear gas?"

Most of this stuff has been though about IRL. We don't need to be that imaginative when the real world provides plenty.

[Raffik]

2 hours ago, bonerstorm said:

Why are you guys trying to shoot behind cover? If you fire one square in front of the cover, there's no penalty and you delete the cover.

All the weapons have much higher effective ranges than the game gives them credit for, which is quite annoying for verisimilitude but I guess it's unavoidable with the style of game.

It's not that bad if you know how to work it. It's a medium-range cover deleter, long-range wall mouseholer, and all-around wraith-cloak-disabler.

If you spot a wraith in a building beyond the jogging range of your shottys, grenadier uses one shot to blast the wall... another to disable the cloak... and probably has another shot after that to make sure it's suppressed (which regular frags don't do for some annoying reason). Then your snipers, LMGs or MARS can exterminate without the worry that you'll end the turn with it alive/unsuppressed so it can one-shot two of your guys with pinpoint accuracy or kill three of them with one well-aimed plasma grenade.

The damage, though, is totally pitiful and needs to be buffed. Like I said, it gets a lot better when you get the grenade upgrades... but it really should do 60 avg damage from the jump.

What you're describing is a mortar. That is indeed something that would be cool to have.

Someone in another thread asked about whether they could combine flashbangs with smoke grenades... and I was like: "You mean tear gas?"

Most of this stuff has been though about IRL. We don't need to be that imaginative when the real world provides plenty.

well I did not mean a mortar in particular, but the grenade launcher could be used in similar fashion Iwith a curved trajectory I agree. But not just as that only,  with flechette rounds it would turn the grenadier into a CQC as well.

Edited August 1, 2023 by Raffik

[kingsword]

11 hours ago, bonerstorm said:

Why are you guys trying to shoot behind cover? If you fire one square in front of the cover, there's no penalty and you delete the cover.

I don't. The result is the same WHEREVER I target. In front of cover, behind cover, on top of cover, target, the ground in front of cover. I reloaded 5 times trying every possible position and the grenade flies off the map.

[Staffie]

On 7/25/2023 at 5:52 PM, Mr.Xia said:

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.

they would be a great idea but still after 50 turn the aliens in the craft not moved and I don't mean there not come out but it like there glued to the stop inside the craft. so they are useless. unless they actually make the alien move for a change the only ones I ever seen move on the map are the reapers. mine tact is the throw a flasn bang in the suppress them and the smoke. I have 2 team member that all they have flash bangs and smoke. would they get more time units I maybe give them a shield.

[Hapato]

been fighting the cleaners,  sometime ago, and hit one. He went from 40 down to 35 with a full blast to the torso. An actual grenade launcher would dissolve a human body to the point that they d pick him up with small spoons. Unless this works as designed, (say for example the cleaners wear a kind of cloth that somehow disarms the grenade causing to fall unexplowded to the floor) then there's something wrong or even rotten here.

[Mr.Xia]

On 8/1/2023 at 2:24 PM, bonerstorm said:

Why are you guys trying to shoot behind cover? If you fire one square in front of the cover, there's no penalty and you delete the cover.

 

The point is that the grenade launcher is too inefficient to have a good use case in any scenario. If the launcher can arc over a longer range than grenades to provide utility, has more different types of ammo to shoot, or just give it more range & accuracy seriously chris, bring back the rocket launcher. , then it makes sense for it to exist.

 

Right now its outclassed by grenades/satchel charges or the MARS robot.

[Conductiv]

started a new run a few days back to employ the HEVY

1. the larger destructive blast radius for terrain is actually very useful when compared to the satchel charge. it can often catch multiple instances of cover or both the cover and the target in its blast 
2. the weapon is one of the most economical as it is free and never needs to be build as an upgrade, the ammunition increases in power with the grenade upgrades even though only the ammunition text box really changes, the ammo art is not notably different, if its different atoll.
3. since the primary target of the weapon is battlefield terrain, the trooper using it will hardly advance in accuracy even if you catch targets within the blast radius.
4. the weapon has a range of 15 tiles and a very high close range accuracy bonus in his stats chart, but this bonus does not apply unless you are within 5 tiles or so (this is different from any other weapon, where the accuracy bonus from getting closer applies the moment you are closer then the weapons maximum range). and since the weapon has a maximum accuracy multiplier of 1.05 it needs a very accurate trooper to make the shots reliably land on longer distances.
5. it being a flat cost weapon, its one of the few that can actually be fired more often as the trooper levels TU, it also allows high TU grenadiers to move long distances and still fire.
6. obvious, it looks like a grenade launcher, the ammo looks like 40mm grenades, even though the description states it is a rocket launcher. this obviously causes confusion about its lack of an indirect fire mode of everyone that assumes its a grenade launcher.
7. extremely heavy at 40 weight units, for its weight cost and a single reload (40+16= 56, 8 shots) one can take along 9 other grenade types (6X9= 54), the advantage of the weapon is more that it can carry a lot of terrain destruction in few backpack slots (its compact compared to the large satchel charges) but you'd need extremely strong troops for backpack space to be a problem.

having given it a chance I do see the use of this weapon, compared to the mars its much..much cheaper to run, compared to lugging around many satchels its compact. the problem is  that, since it doesn't have grenade scatter, its prone to wild misses and it needs an ace shot trooper wielding it to get any sort of reliability out of it. while a modicum of strength on any other soldier will get you fairly accurate grenade throws that can be executed much safer.   

[GreyICE]

On 7/30/2023 at 11:09 PM, bonerstorm said:

 

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

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.

 In real life 40 mm grenade launchers have airburst mode my dude.  That means they'll detonate a fixed distance from the grenade launcher when the trigger is pulled.  In Xenonauts, a grenade can go whistling past the target, across the road, over the fence, into a convienence store and kill the cashier.  In real life, they'll detonate at the distance set when the trigger is pulled so if the alien is 50' away the grenade will detonate at 50'.   This is done by a computer system that recognizes the distance to the target the grenade launcher was aimed at when the trigger was pulled, and sets the fuse as the grenade launches to automatically detonate at the fixed distance.   While you could "miss", they would never go whistling off the map (that is as you say, a warcrime waiting to happen)

Now we could ask this very complex programming to be done, or we could have grenade launchers replicate this behavior by arcing like thrown grenades, thus guaranteeing they detonate near the alien they're aimed at.  In the interests of not driving the programmer insane, I know which one is simpler.   This also has the benefit of being very intuitive, because the "grenade launcher" acts similarly to the "grenade" in game and it's always nice when two things that seem similar actually are similar, it makes the game more intuitive and readable.   "Airburst" would be neither intuitive nor readable, while arcs would be. 

Also real life is a fun guide, but this is a fictional alien invasion where the cold war and the iron curtain are still alive and well in 2008.   If things behave differently than their "real life" counterparts in the interests of making a better game, ah well. 

[bonerstorm]

On 8/4/2023 at 12:18 AM, GreyICE said:

 In real life 40 mm grenade launchers have airburst mode my dude.  That means they'll detonate a fixed distance from the grenade launcher when the trigger is pulled.  In Xenonauts, a grenade can go whistling past the target, across the road, over the fence, into a convienence store and kill the cashier.  In real life, they'll detonate at the distance set when the trigger is pulled so if the alien is 50' away the grenade will detonate at 50'.   This is done by a computer system that recognizes the distance to the target the grenade launcher was aimed at when the trigger was pulled, and sets the fuse as the grenade launches to automatically detonate at the fixed distance.   While you could "miss", they would never go whistling off the map (that is as you say, a warcrime waiting to happen)

Now we could ask this very complex programming to be done, or we could have grenade launchers replicate this behavior by arcing like thrown grenades, thus guaranteeing they detonate near the alien they're aimed at.  In the interests of not driving the programmer insane, I know which one is simpler.   This also has the benefit of being very intuitive, because the "grenade launcher" acts similarly to the "grenade" in game and it's always nice when two things that seem similar actually are similar, it makes the game more intuitive and readable.   "Airburst" would be neither intuitive nor readable, while arcs would be. 

Also real life is a fun guide, but this is a fictional alien invasion where the cold war and the iron curtain are still alive and well in 2008.   If things behave differently than their "real life" counterparts in the interests of making a better game, ah well. 

AFAIK modern standard MGL's do not have programmable fuses. I do not believe there is any man-portable 40mm revolver MGL with programmable fuses. The MK285 which works as you describe is fired out of vehicle-mounted belt-fed automatic grenade launchers.

The XM25 with 25mm programmable fuses was field tested in Afghanistan and the Rangers eventually refused to take them because they weren't reliable/useful enough to be worth the weight.

[Pietje666]

Would it possible to give the weapon itself an upgrade to stay in the game with the rest? Like more range, more damage, lesser weight, different style of ammo to make it more versatile? 

It's the only weapon who doesn't get a decent upgrade. 

[Raffik]

1 hour ago, Pietje666 said:

Would it possible to give the weapon itself an upgrade to stay in the game with the rest? Like more range, more damage, lesser weight, different style of ammo to make it more versatile? 

It's the only weapon who doesn't get a decent upgrade. 

the ammo gets upgraded with each new explosives technology, its visible when you hover over the weapon - there is a damage bonus of 25% more for each tech (alenium 125%, fusion 150% if I am not mistaken). I believe there will be specific rounds for each upgrade later on.

What I would love to see ingame would be a shallow firing arc for the explosive rounds and direct fire ammo for close quarter combat (flechette/buckshot). That would make a grenadier very versatile.

As for the weight, I believe it is fair, as the weight of 40 includes the 4 loaded grenades already, the gun itself then has weight of 24, which is not that much (less than accelerated rifle or a machinegun - although the game does not show it, which might be a bug when I think about it) given its power and fixed TU usage.

Edited August 29, 2023 by Raffik