v19.7 Grenades exploding at the end of turn are next to useless

[noname19]

Really, if your reasoning for making most of the grenades explode at the end of your turn, please turn it back. In fight, I use explosives to *wound* enemies, clear the way of obstacles and to pin enemies down. All of those tactics are now next to useless. If you kill enemies with explosives, they are gone and their equip (MONEY!) with them. Grenade goes first, clear the way and rifles can shoot without problems. Not anymore.

It's similar for stun gas grenades - you just throw enough grenades to render your target uncounscious, but when they explode after your turn, you have no way to know if it was enough. Mistakes in that area kills your people very fast.

If your reasoning is to protect soldiers from bad grenade throw, add some small delay after the grenade is thrown before it explodes. If you see a problem, you can still doubleclick your soldier away.

[HenryBlatbugIII]

I just came here to post this, but I only noticed it with alenium grenades, not frag grenades. I'm not sure if it's an intentional change that wasn't applied to frag grenades, or an unintentional bug that only occurs with the advanced grenades.

[noname19]

Its in V19.7 changelog. If it's not applied to frag frenades, than THAT may be a bug. Holy frag granades. Now if only they had damage to do some harm...

[thothkins]

I've not played this build too much ye, but having read the changelog I just imagined that my missions would take longer. 1) due to having to wait to see the results of the grenades and 2) with no way of using them as lifesavers, I'm much less likely to move troops forward in the same way.

[kabill]

I thought I'd noticed Frags not having the delay, but then I upgraded to Alenium and they were working as intended, so I thought maybe I imagined it/didn't remember right.

As for the balance issue, I've still had plenty of opportunities to use grenades and they've still proven life-savers on occasion. I don't mind that it makes it harder to use them to weaken enemies, either, since it's a way of exploiting the overdamage mechanic.

[noname19]

Kabill, I would really like to understand the second part of what you wrote, can't wrap my head around it somehow.

And my issue isn't with only with the inability to see what will happen when I use a grenade, my main problems are that it has now much *less* tactical use. No suppression, no area cleaning when you need it. They are now *only* good for damaging / killing enemies, if you don't care what state they will be left in as long as they are not a threat.

[kabill]

Sorry - to rephrase: I quite like how grenades work and don't think that they're not very useful. Playing today, I've had a number of opportunities to use grenades in a way which stopped people from dying, in spite of the fact that they explode at the end of the turn.

The fact that they explode at the end of the turn is also a good way of 'enforcing' the overdamage penalty from grenades, since otherwise you're best throwing the grenade first and then finishing with direct fire like you have suggested. I think you're right in saying that they're now only good for damaging/killing enemies and I'm fine with that, because that's largely what grenades are for! If you want to cause suppression during your turn to stop reaction fire, use a flash bang instead (indeed, this change actually make flashbangs and explosive grenades more distinct in terms of how they cause suppression).

Hope that makes sense!

[noname19]

Yep, perfectly. You are right that it makes flashbangs more distinct. But the same effect would be achieved by setting explosive grenade's suppresion to 0.

At least in the beginning, before your soldiers can hit an enemy and get their hands on weapons that can do some damage, grenades are much more important then later on. They are also main way to capture aliens, something you do ASAP. Therefore this change increases difficulty mostly in early game. That's the wrong difficulty curve.

Grenades received more then enough nerfs lately, please don't damage their tactical value even more.

Edited August 17, 2013 by noname19

[kabill]

Reducing grenade suppression could also work. But (personally) I'd rather that not be the case, because it doesn't make sense to me that someone would just shrug off being exploded, while flinching at nearby gunshots.

As someone who doesn't use grenades a lot (I'm meaning specifically frag grenades here, which I think is the point of discussion), I'm not convinced that grenades are necessarily any more important early on in the game. In a new game I started today I'm up to mid-November and could count the number of frags I've thrown on one hand. And I'm not convinced I've suffered from it at all.

I think I'd be open to the argument that this additional change is a nudge slightly into too much nerf (maybe). But I'd rather see them (re)buffed in some other way than removing the delay if anything's going to happen at all (I've been hoping the blast radius might increase since I first threw one and this desire redoubled itself now there's more aliens on missions!).

[Wondering whether this discussion shouldn't move off to the Beta board?]

[maackey]

As someone who doesn't use grenades a lot ... I'm not convinced I've suffered from it at all.

Well of course if you don't use them you won't suffer from them sucking. I do use them quite a lot, perhaps too much as I constantly get CTDs when multiple grenades are thrown. But aside from the game-breaking bugs, I don't think they are too bad.

Its really disappointing that once you throw the new grenades you can't pick them up again and have bucket brigade/chain gang tossing shenanigans. It would work well especially with the extremely short range that grenades have. Without being able to pick them up, I think a range buff is in order, as they are otherwise outclassed entirely by other weapons, except in extreme situations like when a sebillian charges in right next to your soldiers and you need to take it out NOW. (but even then, point blank burst fire is pretty effective *and* doesn't destroy loot so... I'm hard pressed to find a situation where they are useful, without exploiting glitches)

Edited August 18, 2013 by maackey

[kabill]

Well of course if you don't use them you won't suffer from them sucking. I do use them quite a lot, perhaps too much as I constantly get CTDs when multiple grenades are thrown. But aside from the game-breaking bugs, I don't think they are too bad.

Sorry, my point wasn't that I've not suffered from the change much because I don't use grenades a lot (although that's certainly true!); I was rejecting the contention that grenades are especially important in the early game and therefore nerfing them was creating a 'wrong difficulty curve'.

[noname19]

Well, maybe I am doing something wrong, but I really needed grenades at lot at the beginning. Weak weapons, horrible aim, etc. Rocket launchers help a lot, but they are not omnipotent. Most soldiers are able to get closer and throw some grenades even over things that would make it impossible for your gunners to hit their targets. And stun gas grenades are very important, especially when you need some new research. Not knowing if they will render your target uncouscious or not is a problem.

Later on, your weapons can actually shoot, hit and even destroy the environment, so grenade usefulness goes down a notch or two, but they still remain your best bet to incapacitate enemies. Rocket-delivered stun gas is too weak and my soldiers refuse to go hand to claw combat with stun batons.

[Ishantil]

Didn't grenades explode at the end of the player turn in X-COM?

[kabill]

Yes (or after a number of turns, depending on how you set them).

[Ishantil]

And 0 was the default which meant "end of this turn". Do they all explode at once? Or one at a time?

[kabill]

OG? I think they exploded one after the other, but the explosion would destroy any thrown grenades in the blast area so you couldn't stack them. They might have changed that in TFTD.

If you mean Xenonauts, don't know. It sounds like it might cause crashes, so I've been avoiding throwing more than one!

[Gromitek]

In my opinion the first approach with immediately exploding grandes was better.

[StellarRat]

Either way it's not a bug. It's a disagreement with a design decision. You should post in the beta section.

[Aaron]

The bug forum is for bugs, not suggestions - I won't read suggestions posted here.