This is something unique when z-levels are enabled. The RDX charges, I acknowledge, are stupidly powerful but I’ve noticed that they can cause holes that go 7-8 levels deep, which is on par with a mininuke as far as damage goes.
Is this intended because these charges are absolutely insane, or is there a bit of insanity going on here?
Been about a week or so since I read Kevin and some other dude discussing the “casualty” meaning and at what amount of power such explosives should be, in terms of destruction. Not sure if that was resolved to temper the explosions at all. But that other dude had a reasonable argument. Maybe if I find the thread I’ll PM you. Perhaps the damage will be toned back some. I nearly died from 3 grenades going off at the same time the other day. I punched the run button and dove into a back door bus. Kicked the door closed and as I did so. The entire corner of the bus was blown off.
Was like…whoa! 0_0
(forgot to mention it was 20 tiles away)
An important thing regarding explosions and force distribution:
In real life, almost no wall is 1m^3, even a heavily reinforced concrete wall is, in most cases, considerably thinner in its depth dimension. This means that a true 1m^3 block such as solid earth or rock often should absorb a LOT more damage than a reinforced concrete slab, despite the latter being a great deal harder and more resilient per m^3.
More importantly still - Even in cases where you really are dealing with an incredibly thick reinforced wall, it STILL lacks the fundamental pressure backdrop that the ground does.
For all intents and purposes, the ground is backed up by a functionally infinite amount of mass beneath it, meaning that it cannot be breached by an overpressure wave. This in not true of a 1m thick concrete slab, or even a series of such slabs. They ultimately open on voids on the far side, which means that they can be crushed and breached by sufficient overpressure.
As a result, in order for a bomb to leave a serious crater in the ground it must either vaporize, compress, or horizontally displace all that mass, which requires vastly more force than simply blasting thru a wall, even a very heavily reinforced one. This kind of force could obliterate an entire bunker complex like an eggshell before it manages to produce a particularly deep crater in the ground.
As such, the z-level blast depth of bombs against solid ground should be very much shallower than their ability to blast through walls or floors, even in bunkers and fortifications. Even full scale fusion bombs don’t leave especially deep craters.
170lbs of ANFO could definitely destroy multiple levels in a structure.
Especially if you add debris and compression.