New Bionic: Explosive Resonator
Allows detection of otherwise hidden explosives. Allows triggering of explosives at distance.
New area:
Grenade groves. Some owners took the defense of their property seriously, and purchased “intrusion denial systems”. Originally intended to be used against invading armies, every third tree in some areas of forest have been implanted with a powerful grenade. Don’t worry about accidents! These grenades can only be triggered by the special grenade-grove remote. They can be retrieved from cut down trees, but are useless without the remote.
The remote does not exist. Use the explosive resonator instead.
Hmm. Items that can’t be used for their intended purpose without a bionic, which might detect landmines but otherwise seems pretty much useful only for using the otherwise useless items.
What exactly does the bionic accomplish, and why would I want to find it in a Lab finale or Bunker, over (say) Targeting or Enhanced Hearing?
I’m glad you asked! In addition to allowing you to see and clear landmines, or use landmines and grenade groves for taking out enemies, it also allows you to use normally launched grenades as a throwing weapon, and other explosive on a strict “explode as needed” basis.
If you like explosives, it’s an incredibly versatile little tool. Decide exactly when any explosives go off, and never get unexpectedly caught by them yourself? Sounds good to me.
Explosives are currently a pretty minor part of combat, for me, because the ones which require a grenade launcher are just too much of a space investment for me to want to use them.
HE (impact) grenade : Does shock effect, ground zero is annihilated (huge point damage), squares around point zero get medium damage and beyond that some light damage/ shock effect. Can break walls/structures in squares around ground zero. HE grenades are really not that powerful against loose groups. You’d want to lob one of these to hulk or to create emergency exit, but they can be used against tight groups with decent efficiency too.
Shrapnel grenade : Does projectile effect and minor shock at ground zero. Best way to handle shrapnel is to shoot “bullets” at caliber about 9mm out of ground zero - 50 bullets would be about optimal. Just select random points 15m around ground zero and see if anything gets into bullets path and start hit chance of 20% in ground zero, 90% one square from ground zero to about 10% at outer edge, thats about realistic. Shrapnels are deadly to groups. Only downside is that if there are stuff around ground zero they are going to suck up majority of shrapnels thus protect anything that is behind them, so in totally packed group shrapnels would over-kill about 9 things in group and somewhat hurt next “layer” - but they would be much more efficient if thrown on small opening in the group or to loose group to allow shrapnels to spread more before starting to hit stuff so nearby things would not soak shrapnels. Has medium chance to destroy structures at ground zero, and some shock effect at range 1 - but beyond that only shrapnel effect is relevant… LIKE. Be in a trench crouched -> Shrapnel lands next to you -> BOOM -> you are shaken but OK VS Be in the open -> Shrapnel lands next to you -> BOOM -> You are so so so very fucked.
Thermite grenade : Thrown instant inferno on ground zero. Will destroy everything and anything on square after burning some time. 100% chance to destroy structures at ground zero. Starts instantly fires on any ignitable material around ground zero.
Phosporous grenade / incendary : Pyromaniacs choise. Explodes to 15 tracers that have 60% chance to ignite whatever they hit to. In all aspects should be like normal fire (except that phospor is almost impossible to extinquish, but that is probably unneccesary to feature).
The thing is, grenades are often mistood as “automatic AOE success”. They are not that. Impact HE grenades have really limited effective range and shrapnels are nothing more than flying wall of bullets, both can be devastating at times, but they can also be very inefficient at other times. I’d love to see this thing done properly at CDDA.
Why not having a biotic that takes iron and other chemicals from the blood and turning them into remote blasting caps that are detonated by another bionic or battery fueled device. You would select a channel for the blasting cap, and the item with the blasting cap would show like: “Grenade (Ch:[1-10 number])” and the item or bionic would need a channel to detonate on.
Of course this would make suicide bomber NPCs possible, which is completely awesome.
Suicide PC: let the player manually detonate a 40mm round in hand; same concept as seen in Aliens.
Tear gas would apply burning damage, flashbang probably the equivalent of a HE if you’ve got it in your hand. Actual explosives=auto-kill, but at least you aren’t going to rise again.