Give me advice on grenades and smoke

[The Reaver of Darkness]

I grew up playing X-Com without using grenades very often, and never using smoke or proximity grenades. My family members and I perceived them as useless. But I am seeing plenty of players who feel that they are very useful to have in the game.


I want to know if you guys would use these items in the late game if there were powerful versions available. I'm pondering possibly adding some things to my megamod but I am being careful not to add items that won't be popular to use. I don't want excess clutter that just makes item lists longer. Would you guys use these things?

(Keep in mind the mod already includes smoke rocket (start), smoke bomb for small launcher, enhanced alien grenade and enhanced+heavier high explosive.)

1.) Smoke blaster bomb - missile with waypoints that makes a very large cloud of smoke

2.) Autocannon smoke shot (AC has arc shot)

3.) Alien proximity grenade - alien grenade blast power (110) but detonates on proximity


Also, if there is some kind of smoke, proximity, grenade, flare, stun, or other utility item you wish were in the game, describe it here and how you'd use it. Don't worry about balancing the item, leave that to me. Just tell me what you dream of having at your disposal and what you would use often.

[Meridian]

Smoke grenades and high explosives are EXTREMELY powerful even in very late game.
I don't feel like adding even more powerful alternatives is really necessary.

Just my 5 cents.

[The Reaver of Darkness]

Smoke grenades and high explosives are EXTREMELY powerful even in very late game.

A lot of things are extremely powerful. If the goal was to increase difficulty, it would be good to consider these things:
 * Flying Suits can completely avoid chryssalids and other melee types
 * Plasma Beams can out-range every UFO except battleships
 * The sale of plasma guns and UFO power source/navigation grants way more money than you'll ever use
 * The manufacture of laser cannons pays way more than the cost of having the engineers
 * Tanks are immune to psionics and morale loss
 * Motion scanners can see enemies through smoke and darkness
 * Mind-controlled aliens can spot other aliens for you to mind control
 * You can see terrain with the cursor box, enabling you to navigate blaster bombs through unexplored terrain

There's a ton of ways to dominate the aliens to the point they don't stand a chance against you. And there's a ton of ways to mod the game to increase difficulty in any of these areas.

My focus here isn't about how powerful something already is, but only on whether or not making it more powerful would make you want to use it. Here's something to help: picture a scenario in which all of those things have been nerfed, maybe the aliens have so many time units they can still get you through smoke if your smokescreen isn't big enough or you aren't careful, and they are tough enough that the basic proximity grenade won't kill them. Smoke still works and proximity grenades still damage. Would you still use the basic smoke grenades and proximity grenades? And if you could research a bigger smoke cover and more powerful proximity grenade, would it be worth something to you? How much smoke is enough, to the point you wouldn't care for more? Is collateral damage from proximity grenades an inhibiting factor or does more powerful = better every time?

[Hobbes]

(Keep in mind the mod already includes smoke rocket (start), smoke bomb for small launcher, enhanced alien grenade and enhanced+heavier high explosive.)

1.) Smoke blaster bomb - missile with waypoints that makes a very large cloud of smoke

2.) Autocannon smoke shot (AC has arc shot)

I also have Smoke Rocket, Smoke Bomb and a smoke round for the Grenade Launcher in my Area 51 mod. My personal feeling about them, and also your AC and blaster smoke rounds is that they have less utility than smoke grenades.

Smoke is a double edged weapon: it can both hide your units and the aliens. If an entire map is covered with smoke then the vision of both sides is reduced to that of night missions, making hunting for aliens more dangerous.

So smoke should be used in moderation, and through a device that can be easily placed on the right location to mask your advance but don't leave the enemy units covered in smoke. Thus, smoke grenades are the best option.

[SteamXCOM]

I have far less causalities using smoke in general.  In some ways I can see why it might be considered overpowered, but I need more experience in the game at different difficulty levels before I could venture that opinion more authoritatively.

I was experimenting with the HEAVY CANNON firing smoke rounds.  I think it has too much the effect of like instant
smoke grenades even at power 20 where the initial blast covers far less than the power 60.  With a three or four soldiers using the heavy cannon with smoke rounds, casualties were  almost nil in the few experiments I tried.

Smoke is a double edged weapon: it can both hide your units and the aliens. If an entire map is covered with smoke then the vision of both sides is reduced to that of night missions, making hunting for aliens more dangerous.

Now this is very interesting

[SteamXCOM]

From the UFOPEDIA
https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php/Smoke_Grenade
Map limitations

Perhaps the biggest drawback of the use of smoke is the limited availability of smoke "squares" that can be displayed on the map. Only 400 squares of smoke or fire can be displayed on the map at any one time; this is equivalent to about three smoke grenades, or less than that if smoke or fire has been generated by HE or Incendiary rounds. If the UFO has crash-landed, there may be even less smoke available for display.

It takes 15-20 turns for the cloud from a smoke grenade to clear, during which time you may be unable to create additional clouds in desired locations. The game seems to store "undisplayed" smoke -- as smoke from earlier explosions clears, smoke from more recent explosions appears, even if it was not displayed at first.

It is believed that "undisplayed" smoke does not provide any cover, and this has been tested to some extent.

Smoke spreads around after an explosion. While smoke itself is stored in the savefile SMOKREF.DAT, perhaps information as to where the smoke will go to is stored in SMOKBIT.DAT - Explaining why "undisplayed" smoke seems to "reappear" later on... - BB

[ohartenstein23]

snip

This limitation is fixed in openxcom IIRC.  Spam smoke as much as you'd like.

My favorite place to smoke is just in front of troops facing a large open area, so I can easily walk a few tiles forward to get clear vision and go back into cover, while the enemy has to cover wide open ground to reach the smoke clouds and see my soldiers behind it. Also great for preventing reaction deaths on the skyranger's ramp.

[The Reaver of Darkness]

If an entire map is covered with smoke then the vision of both sides is reduced to that of night missions,

At night, the aliens see you like it's day. In smoke, the aliens' vision is also reduced. A disadvantage is sometimes one unit can see another but the other can't see the one. It's difficult to predict but sometimes you can be denied mutual surprise or see an alien that can't react.

This limitation is fixed in openxcom IIRC.  Spam smoke as much as you'd like.

Yes, openxcom has very large stack sizes, so things like fire, smoke, ship items, units on the map, etc. are essentially limitless. I just ran a test by throwing down some 4000 tiles of smoke (~70% of a 4x4 map, total 6400 tiles minus terrain blocks).


I think there are a few advantages to being able to throw down smoke on your own turn:
1.) You can spot an alien (that can't shoot due to mutual surprise), then you can hide it with smoke and mow it down without incurring reaction fire. There are other ways to suppress reaction fire, such as running back out of sight range, or using more distant snipers. But it's a thing you can do to gain an advantage and in some situations it's the best option.
2.) You can use it to get off the ship safely. Aliens very frequently hide near the front end of the ship, making it impossible to exit without being shot at, unless somehow they can't see you. You can alternatively use blaster bombs to clear the area, but that's actually more expensive and less successful.
3.) If aliens see you during your turn, their psionic users begin tracking you immediately and can follow those soldiers for several turns even if no alien can see them. Masking your soldiers in smoke right away prevents them from getting on the psionic attack list.


Thanks so much for the responses! I'm getting a good idea of your feelings on smoke but I'd still like to hear more. Also, how do you guys use proximity grenades?

[wolfreal]

I like a lot proximity in vainilla Xcom. Maybe a updated but not so powerfull as 110 one can be interesting. Or maybe a little more heavy so you can´t launch it so far away. Or a high explosive with proximity sensing, but no more than that. At least in what I understand is your general idea for the mod.

Smoke is very useful, and I understand the general feeling of being almost cheaty. A mega powerful smoke I think it is not necessary.

Or... a very VERY expensive nuke. Just for the fun of send to hell everything

[The Reaver of Darkness]

Or... a very VERY expensive nuke. Just for the fun of send to hell everything

There's 2 of them in my mod, one for the battlescape and one for the geoscape. 

[yrizoud]

The vanilla game doesn't need more powerful throwable explosives/proxy/smokes, however a better in-game explanation of smoke would really help new players get on even ground with players who already know the internals.

I think fire is very interesting, tactically, because as you can guess, the AI's self-preservation will make them avoid standing (ending turn) in flaming tiles. While smoke restricts the enemy shooting, this restricts their movement.
If your team is too small to cover all areas, put a large puddle of fire in places that you turn your back to.
Torch a window or this nasty rooftop which overlooks your deployment, and the enemy won't pop their head out to shoot you. Even if you never actually damage a single enemy with it, it can really reduce enemy dangers.

When not playing vanilla game, I use a mod with fire grenades, it's much more handy than the incendiary ammo of heavy weapons. Piratez-style molotof would be a nice variant, as it adds a bit of variety (grenade relay not possible, TU usage can be different from hard-coded prime+throw)

[SteamXCOM]

ohartenstein23 ==>Spam smoke as much as you'd like.

 

Reaver==>I just ran a test by throwing down some 4000 tiles of smoke (~70% of a 4x4 map, total 6400 tiles minus terrain blocks).

 The original game only allowed 400 tiles of smoke. With unlimited smoke available in OpenXcom by comparison, I wonder how much a different game it becomes? 
 
 

Thanks so much for the responses! I'm getting a good idea of your feelings on smoke but I'd still like to hear more. Also, how do you guys use proximity grenades?

 Throw one down in front of an alien space door and shoot at the door with a pistol or something.  When aliens come out to investigate....*
 
 If you see an alien creeping about you cannot get a good bead on, throw a proximity grenade in its direction. However if on a terror mission and you care about civilians, they could set it off instead.

 * when relearning the game, my soldier stood in front of the door, primed the proximity grenade dropped it and then stepped away...yes the letter I had to write to their family trying to explain THAT.

[Hobbes]

The original game only allowed 400 tiles of smoke. With unlimited smoke available in OpenXcom by comparison, I wonder how much a different game it becomes?

 
 
400 tiles of smoke/fire, usually this translates into being able to reliably use 2 smoke grenades per mission in vanilla. And after the 400 slots are used, any unused smoke grenades become useless.

In OpenXCom I usually spend the first turn by deploying a smoke grenade outside and priming all the other smoke grenades and placing them on the soldiers' belt. Then I use them as required to prevent aliens from spotting or targeting my soldiers. So I'd say in OXC I use at least the double amount of smoke grenades than in vanilla.

[SteamXCOM]

 
 
400 tiles of smoke/fire, usually this translates into being able to reliably use 2 smoke grenades per mission in vanilla. And after the 400 slots are used, any unused smoke grenades become useless.

 This ends up being a different game from the original, from having 2-3  smoke grenades to unlimited.
 I do not recall using smoke in the original game, but that might be ignorance, nevertheless to capture that flavor maybe:
 --allow only 3 smoke grenades per mission (self limiting)
 --or jack up smoke prices so much I think harder about whether or not to spend one
 --make them researchable as an "anti alien sight vapor" (or some other justification) and only obtainable by in house manufacture which depending upon how much other stuff I'm building; would be a limiting factor.

[yrizoud]

In OpenXCom I usually spend the first turn by deploying a smoke grenade outside

It's often advised, but when I've tried to establish a standard practice of it, I got shot in the face several time through the smoke, by aliens in high levels (sectoid sniping from barn window, floater walking on a roof)
I suspect the default smoke pattern is less dense above ground zero, and/or the line of sight algorithm happens to more easily find a path that avoids 3 full smoke tiles.