Author Topic: Purpose of grenades  (Read 3568 times)

Offline Bonakva

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Purpose of grenades
« on: January 19, 2021, 04:17:44 pm »
Can you conditionally explain the purpose of the grenades?
Flashbang Grenade - useful when you need to put debuffs, the only grenade that goes off after the throw?
Grenade - instant damage, versatile against people and monsters (destroys objects)
Incendiary Grenade - clearing the terrain from vegetation, highlighting the terrain at night, setting fire to enemies, controlling zombies, there is practically no instant damage, useless for causing damage
Smoke Grenade - no comments, useful for retreating or burning out a line of fire (choke damage? Can enemies / lemengi die in smoke?)
Napalm Grenade - what is its meaning? it is more powerful than a regular grenade
Tritanium Grenade - instant damage, good against many people and monsters (does not destroy items, right? More powerful than a regular grenade?)
EMP Grenade - against robots, tanks
Stun Grenade - instant stun damage to capture enemy manpower
Proximity Grenade - More powerful than a regular grenade. Does it work if you immediately hit the enemy? What is the activation radius?
« Last Edit: January 19, 2021, 05:40:52 pm by Bonakva »

Offline Mrvex

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Re: Purpose of grenades
« Reply #1 on: January 19, 2021, 04:36:38 pm »
Incendiary weapons in general can panic enemies (and animals too), causing them to falter their turn, if you cant kill someone, try to ignite him.
Smoke grenade can cause overstun and well choke enemies.

Proximity grenades and mines dont require to be step on, if anyone aproaches the surrounding titles it can go off too so you dont need two mines in a hallway, just one.

Tritanium grenade is in my opinion probably the best grenade in the entire game, it has monstrous AoE more akin to a rocket blast, enough damage to one shot alot of enemies in the game and leaves massive fire in its wake that will panic or finish off anyone in the area. Plasma grenade might have more raw damage but Tritanium grenade has much larger area of effect and is accessible earlier and the fire is just a cherry on top. It also costs 2 alloy a pop and is made really quickly and without end game research required so i just stick with it for the rest of the game, alongside elerium explosives which can blow open UFO hulls.

Offline Xenotrenium

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Re: Purpose of grenades
« Reply #2 on: January 19, 2021, 08:19:24 pm »
Flashbangs are the most OP and reliable item you'll get for a looong time. They are an essential tool for almost every conventional mission that you can take them on. Flashbangs are super useful for, among a lot of other things, abduction attempts.

Grenades do guaranteed 50% damage, great way to deal damage whilst avoiding reaction fire (as long as you are not seen).

Incendiary grenades are fantastic against enemies that you normally cannot deal with effectively using guns or explosives (good vs armored targets).
The morale damage they impose is significant against enemies you may not have the raw damage to deal with immediately.
You can lay down fire in a given spot for a turn or two to dissuade people from ending their turn in the fire and\or moving through.
In night missions, you can utilize incendiary grenades to create temporary lighting. Useful if the permanence of flares can pose a problem.
Clearing vegetation
Smoke secondary effect

Smoke grenades provide cover, but both ways. Choke damage is situational. You can smoke enemies instead of yourself to avoid dangerous enemies that may take advantage of your own screen. Black Lotus Warriors thrive in smoke screens and if you have deployed smoke in your direct vicinity, they can and will walk all the way up to your agents undetected. A smoke-free perimiter around your formation can help, but might leave you exposed against enemies which employ range.

Offline Empiro

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Re: Purpose of grenades
« Reply #3 on: January 19, 2021, 11:23:23 pm »
I haven't found a niche for incendiary weapons myself. They don't reliably panic higher tier enemies. I lost one of my best soldiers after hitting a Sorcerer of Dagon with an incendiary grenade at his feet, and having the Sorcerer casually walking up while on fire and blasting him. Against lower tier enemies, a normal grenade would just as likely kill them. Against Zombies, it's kind of the same deal -- I don't think it prevents them from coming up to you and attacking. I don't think enemies route around them either, though it does keep them from ending their turn in the fire.

Flashbangs are alright -- but I've found that their use-case is kind of narrow. They're most useful for nerfing an enemy's action on their turn. However, in most situations, you're so outnumbered that trading one of your guys' actions for one of theirs isn't helpful. If I'm going for a capture it can be helpful, but it's often just as good to spam the KO grenades (if they're susceptible). If reaction fire the current turn is a concern, I've found that using dogs to sap their TUs or just having dogs stand next to them to trigger CQC is far more reliable. Flashbangs can be a super life saver to prevent melee enemies from closing in though.

Smoke Grenades are useful in a lot of situations -- I always toss one down the ramp of the landing craft and end the turn. However, make sure you note which enemies have Thermal Vision or PSI vision, which counters the smoke. The way vision works with the sniper system also limits the effectiveness of smoke quite often too. The small choke damage is also nice in keeping a stunned enemy stunned. It's pretty rare to see an enemy go into overstun from smoke.

KO grenades are super useful, though they have a tiny (3x3 area?) area. I'm also watching Yeti's X-Com Files YT videos from an earlier version, in which the grenades take like 1 hour to craft, and he's just spamming them out every turn. It's too bad they take so long to craft now. Most enemies are really vulnerable to it (even the MIB soldiers, who look like they have gas masks, take 400% damage).

I need to make use of proximity grenades more. I typically use them to mine the door of a UFO (from 1 square away), but they're also useful for tossing down corridors and cutting off areas so that your team can make sweeps of areas without having to worry about their backs. If you need to access that area later, you can always destroy the proximity grenade with a normal one.

I'll need to try out the tritanium grenades. They sound really nice.
« Last Edit: January 19, 2021, 11:46:30 pm by Empiro »

Offline Mrvex

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Re: Purpose of grenades
« Reply #4 on: January 20, 2021, 12:12:12 am »
If you know beforehand that a mission spawns you next to a massed enemy count (For example, some cult bases, cult of apocalypse missions, deep one rituals) then you can easily kill 4-7 enemies with a single throw of a tritanium grenade because its splash is that large and deadly towards humans and animals alike. Its a quick way to farm Multikiller and other mass killing commendations.

Tritanium grenade does 69 cutting damage (Cutting is anti-armour, most enemies and armours dont have resistance towards it).  And this is its radius of ignition on impact.


Offline Bonakva

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Re: Purpose of grenades
« Reply #5 on: January 20, 2021, 06:36:14 am »
The tritan grenade seems to me to be analogous to the needle grenade from xcom2012. It doesn't seem appropriate to me that she sets fire to the area...

Solarius Scorch, might be worth rebalancing the grenade?
Cutting damage over a large area without destroying cover and fire
« Last Edit: January 20, 2021, 10:16:45 am by Bonakva »

Offline Mrvex

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Re: Purpose of grenades
« Reply #6 on: January 20, 2021, 09:44:48 am »
The tritan grenade seems to me to be analogous to the needle grenade from xcom2012. It doesn't seem appropriate to me that she sets fire to the area...

Solarius Scorch, might be worth rebalancing the grenade?
Cutting damage over a large area without destroying cover

It does destroy cover, it wont carve open UFO hulls but it can demolish weaker walls and some surrounding cover. You can even see it in the picture, one of the walls was shattered, exposing a bed and some of the fence was blown away.



Offline Solarius Scorch

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Re: Purpose of grenades
« Reply #7 on: January 20, 2021, 02:11:21 pm »
I agree the fire is a bit over the top, but I didn't have the heart to disable it, it's too cool.

Whether it makes sense or not, it's debatable. Tritanium shards definitely carry lots of energy, and since it's a fictional material, I think it can be excused... But I'm open to inputs.

Offline Mrvex

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Re: Purpose of grenades
« Reply #8 on: January 20, 2021, 03:06:38 pm »
I agree the fire is a bit over the top, but I didn't have the heart to disable it, it's too cool.

Whether it makes sense or not, it's debatable. Tritanium shards definitely carry lots of energy, and since it's a fictional material, I think it can be excused... But I'm open to inputs.
Oh dont hurt my azure babies, they are such a joy to use.  :)


Offline Bonakva

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Re: Purpose of grenades
« Reply #9 on: February 05, 2021, 04:56:05 am »
How do I turn off the fire of Tritanium grenades?

Offline Solarius Scorch

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Re: Purpose of grenades
« Reply #10 on: February 05, 2021, 02:58:27 pm »
How do I turn off the fire of Tritanium grenades?

You'd need to modify FireThreshold  on the grenade (currently 30) to something appropriately higher.