Add another explosive charge "Breaching Charge"

IDEA:

Add another explosive charge "Breaching Charge" that has a very small radius (3x3) that is very well suited to blowing small holes into walls, or blowing UFO doors, without damaging hardly anything around them.

BACKGROUND INFO:

ATTRIBUTES:

Size:

The breaching charge should be smaller than the normal C4; 1x1 backpack slot and 0.5 kg is what I've come up with.

However, to differentiate between the two of them, perhaps the normal C4 should have a larger weight, 2kg perhaps. Just because it's kinda really powerful for the current weight, you know? (Taking distance compression into account)

Primary effect:

It'd deal damage in a 3x3 area, and destroy the center tile (where the charge is placed) and a wall bordering that tile. The walls on either side should be just over half damaged, but unless it's a picket fence they shouldn't be destroyed outright.

This would allow the placing of two breaching charges against a wall with an empty tile between them to create a 3 wide hole in the wall, enough for a vehicle to fit through (as the overlapping over-half damage would destroy the center wall).

Secondary effect:

If possible, it'd be cool to have some suppression and light smoke (like, the frag grenade smoke, not smoke grenade smoke) out to maybe a 4x4 or a 5x5 area. This is because a breaching charge would kick up dust and suppress people near it, even if it didn't damage them. This'd make using them more useful, as it would automatically put out some light smoke and suppression for when you blow the door and not just open the door.

BALANCE CONCERNS:

CONCLUSION:

So, in essence, there's a large gap in our possible tactics, which is blowing open a door/wall without a) using tons of bullets, or b) destroying stuff around the one wall we want to breach through. This would fill that gap, allowing us to breach walls and doors without destroying everything around them.

Thoughts?

The description's a little silly (we'd say that both use C4, but one is small and more focused, and the other is much larger; smaller explosives charges simply produce a smaller explosion; making it "smaller" doesn't make it more focused, it just removes a lot of the impulse you could use to blast out a hole large enough for a human to enter), but a weapon like this would be cool.

Eh, whatever, I don't care what it's made of. Thermite, then? Detcord? I dunno, what'd make the most sense to you?

Besides, can't we just pack a shaped canister with C4? Either way, the description is more or less irrelevant.

The point is, I want a breaching charge, because we have the opportunity to use one (we even just got breachable UFO doors, for crying out loud, lets use them!).

About the only way it would make much sense was if you could give the guys something like upscaled thermal lances. An explosive charge large or powerful enough to straight-up punch a man-size hole in a solid metal entryway would destroy the absolute shit out of everything around it. Could make it take a couple turns to simulate the guy sitting there working on it for a while.

Well, frankly it doesn't need to make tons of sense.

But, sense is a good thing to make.

Perhaps they put strips of explosives in a rectangle around the desired hole, and detonating that rectangle outline blows through the wall, leaving the center of the rectangle un-exploded, but it still crumbles because it was weakened and fell down due to lack of support on every side.

Anyway, you mentioning the time it takes to set it up made me realize that perhaps it should take a large number of TUs to place the explosive, to simulate prepping the wall/UFO door with the explosive.

Also, a large TU cost could make it more balanced. On the plus side, we have a hole in a wall without any damage to the surrounding areas, on the minus side we'd have a larger TU cost.

Breaching charges generally work by either using a frame charge (like Gizmo mentioned above, with the explosive being a thin strip that surrounds the area to be breached, or a charge backed by a heavy plate of some kind, so that the explosive force is channeled in a specific direction rather than being a burst in all directions.

Either way, it might actually be heavier than just the explosive on its own, to account for the additional equipment that comes as part of it.

Breaching charges generally work by either using a frame charge (like Gizmo mentioned above, with the explosive being a thin strip that surrounds the area to be breached, or a charge backed by a heavy plate of some kind, so that the explosive force is channeled in a specific direction rather than being a burst in all directions.

Well yeah, that makes perfect sense when you're doing a dynamic entry on a brick/wooden/[otherlightstructuralmaterial] structure; we're looking at something that, in-game, is going through what amounts to metal a few centimeters thick, a few meters high, and a meter or so wide. Metal that (assuming you shot it down) just took multiple 135-pound explosive charges without really tearing it open. You'd have to cut that shit; setting off a charge to actually blow that down would obliterate everything around it.

No, the UFO doors aren't part of the main hull.

If you look, there's a hatch that opens to reveal the main door. The armor is moved out of the way.

Well, you're still breaching a massive-ass hull door; this isn't something you knock down like concrete, or plywood, or brick. Hell, you have to cut through the watertights on maritime vessels. Similarly, you can blow them open, but you're wrecking hell out of everything close by.

No, I know; I'm not saying it'd be easy. I'm just pointing out that the UFO doors aren't as armored as the main hull; they're just doors.

Hey, I know, we need a nuclear charge like those rocket launchers in Starship Troopers! That would make those base assaults a lot easier.

Don't we get fusion rockets? Aren't those the same thing?

I remember seeing a prototype which basically would use very highly pressured water on one area to blow that part of the wall causing minimal damage to the surrounding area.

I remember seeing a prototype which basically would use very highly pressured water on one area to blow that part of the wall causing minimal damage to the surrounding area.

I had seen these as well. pretty cool.