# So hey, about those explosions

**URL:** <https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/so-hey-about-those-explosions/9972>\
**Category:** The Bunker\
**Created:** [July 2, 2015, 3:13am UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/so-hey-about-those-explosions/9972 "2015-07-02T03:13:05Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 17\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![Kryxx](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.cataclysmdda.org/kryxx/32/438_2.png) [@Kryxx](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Kryxx)\
**Post date:** [July 4, 2015, 2:35am UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/so-hey-about-those-explosions/9972/21 "2015-07-04T02:35:18Z")

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Sources are so easy to find. This is just for grenades.

Standard M67 frag grenade. Standard Male can toss it 35m, casualty radius 15m, lethal 5m.

[http://fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/m67.htm](http://fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/m67.htm)

here’s an archive of the military spec sheets on them.  
[http://archive.org/stream/milmanual-tm-43-0001-29-army-ammunition-data-sheets-for-grenades/tm-43-0001-29\_army\_ammunition\_data\_sheets\_for\_grenades\_djvu.txt](http://archive.org/stream/milmanual-tm-43-0001-29-army-ammunition-data-sheets-for-grenades/tm-43-0001-29_army_ammunition_data_sheets_for_grenades_djvu.txt)

Wikipedia has an article on it and it lists these two sources also.

What kind of things are you looking for? Manuals for most of these stuff exists.

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**Author:** ![condortaco](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e19adc/32.png) [@condortaco](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/condortaco)\
**Post date:** [July 5, 2015, 8:02am UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/so-hey-about-those-explosions/9972/22 "2015-07-05T08:02:14Z")

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> [@John Candlebury](#):
>
> Yeah it seems explosions are actually very weak now, it’s completely possible to have a pack of dynamite explode in your inventory and survive.

I had a grenade go off in my pack from a misclick and it took me a while to realize what had even happened. It did maybe half a bar of damage to one of my arms.

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**Author:** ![Cowbot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/bc8723/32.png) [@Cowbot](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Cowbot)\
**Post date:** [July 5, 2015, 9:51am UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/so-hey-about-those-explosions/9972/23 "2015-07-05T09:51:28Z")

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The explosions are indeed very weak in current experimentals, especially vs buildings. Come on, I can’t wreck a standard house wall with 30 rpg-7 shots? Really? I presume it’s made of wooden planks or plywood plates on a wooden frame like there [http://snobzones.com/site/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/house-under-construction.jpg](http://snobzones.com/site/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/house-under-construction.jpg) ![](http://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/styles/borealis_article_hero_respondlarge/public/newhome_insulation_14138.jpg) and not from slade-reinforced adamantium.  
Well I know the fact that explosives placed not on the surface would damage it less but this shouldn’t be the case for fired munitions and for the placeable ones we probably need some way to attach them to surface if their explosive power is OK as is (which I think is not).

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**Author:** ![Coolthulhu](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.cataclysmdda.org/coolthulhu/32/2446_2.png) [@Coolthulhu](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Coolthulhu)\
**Post date:** [July 5, 2015, 10:11am UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/so-hey-about-those-explosions/9972/24 "2015-07-05T10:11:29Z")

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> [@Cowbot](#):
>
> Come on, I can’t wreck a standard house wall with 30 rpg-7 shots?

Pretty sure it was like that in the stable too. Effects of explosives against terrain were buffed, not nerfed.

RPG ammo only has “EXPLOSIVE” tag, which creates a strength 24 explosion - not enough to damage a wall.

Many other old explosives are underpowered: C-4 only has 40 explosive power, which is barely above the 30 required to break a regular wall.

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**Author:** ![Cowbot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/bc8723/32.png) [@Cowbot](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Cowbot)\
**Post date:** [July 5, 2015, 12:27pm UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/so-hey-about-those-explosions/9972/25 "2015-07-05T12:27:42Z")

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[quote=“Coolthulhu, post:24, topic:9972”]Pretty sure it was like that in the stable too. Effects of explosives against terrain were buffed, not nerfed.

RPG ammo only has “EXPLOSIVE” tag, which creates a strength 24 explosion - not enough to damage a wall.

Many other old explosives are underpowered: C-4 only has 40 explosive power, which is barely above the 30 required to break a regular wall.[/quote]  
Can I buff that ammo somewhere in json or that is hard-coded? Or with the new explosions setting the power high enough to break a wall with 1-2 shots will result in explosion size of a megamart? And I don’t understand the “buffed” part. I’m pretty sure that when I’ve played stable last summer I was able to wreck half a street with dozen of rpg-7 shots.  
Also if “old” explosives are underpowered which are new ones?

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**Author:** ![Coolthulhu](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.cataclysmdda.org/coolthulhu/32/2446_2.png) [@Coolthulhu](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Coolthulhu)\
**Post date:** [July 5, 2015, 3:51pm UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/so-hey-about-those-explosions/9972/26 "2015-07-05T15:51:00Z")

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[quote=“Cowbot, post:25, topic:9972”]Can I buff that ammo somewhere in json or that is hard-coded? Or with the new explosions setting the power high enough to break a wall with 1-2 shots will result in explosion size of a megamart? And I don’t understand the “buffed” part. I’m pretty sure that when I’ve played stable last summer I was able to wreck half a street with dozen of rpg-7 shots.  
Also if “old” explosives are underpowered which are new ones?[/quote]

Semi-hardcoded: you can select from 3 explosion sizes: EXPLOSIVE, EXPLOSIVE\_BIG and EXPLOSIVE\_HUGE  
\_BIG is comparable to dynamite, \_HUGE to fertilizer bomb.

New ones are fertilizer bomb, ANFO etc. Old ones are C-4, grenades, pipe bombs and (less so) dynamite.

Last summer might have been the 0.A version, which as far as I recall had the old terrain destruction mechanics.

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**Author:** ![John\_Candlebury](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.cataclysmdda.org/john_candlebury/32/6437_2.png) [@John\_Candlebury](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/John_Candlebury)\
**Post date:** [July 5, 2015, 3:54pm UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/so-hey-about-those-explosions/9972/27 "2015-07-05T15:54:45Z")

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Would a tag of [Explosion:“Numeric-Value”] be possible to code without much difficulty? I mean it would be leaps and bounds better than what we have.

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**Author:** ![Coolthulhu](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.cataclysmdda.org/coolthulhu/32/2446_2.png) [@Coolthulhu](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Coolthulhu)\
**Post date:** [July 5, 2015, 6:04pm UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/so-hey-about-those-explosions/9972/28 "2015-07-05T18:04:38Z")

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> [@John Candlebury](#):
>
> Would a tag of [Explosion:“Numeric-Value”] be possible to code without much difficulty? I mean it would be leaps and bounds better than what we have.

Not much difficulty, but could be more work than it looks like.  
Currently we have a mildly hacky system where each ammo effect has to be a string and it has to be checked for with “does this projectile have this effect”, with the effect being a string.

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**Author:** ![kevin.granade](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.cataclysmdda.org/kevin.granade/32/1316_2.png) [@kevin.granade](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/kevin.granade)\
**Post date:** [July 5, 2015, 7:08pm UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/so-hey-about-those-explosions/9972/29 "2015-07-05T19:08:42Z")

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Also realism check, the RPG should easily penetrate the wall, but I’d actually expect it to go through without causing much damage. The main issue here is we don’t have a way to handle “wall with hole punched in it”.  
Probably what we’d expect given the limitations of our system is for it to take out a section of wall on a direct hit, and also cause a moderately large explosion (larger than a grenade, but not as large as a similarly sized concussion or HEAT round)  
A quick slowmo firing of a RPG at a building highlights the problem, it’s not applying the RPG direct damage to the wall it hits, instead it’s just exploding in the square before. If we fix that the full 1,000+ damage of the RPG should easily take out any single section of wall.

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**Author:** ![John\_Candlebury](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.cataclysmdda.org/john_candlebury/32/6437_2.png) [@John\_Candlebury](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/John_Candlebury)\
**Post date:** [July 5, 2015, 7:45pm UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/so-hey-about-those-explosions/9972/30 "2015-07-05T19:45:49Z")

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[quote=“Kevin Granade, post:29, topic:9972”]Also realism check, the RPG should easily penetrate the wall, but I’d actually expect it to go through without causing much damage. The main issue here is we don’t have a way to handle “wall with hole punched in it”.  
Probably what we’d expect given the limitations of our system is for it to take out a section of wall on a direct hit, and also cause a moderately large explosion (larger than a grenade, but not as large as a similarly sized concussion or HEAT round)  
A quick slowmo firing of a RPG at a building highlights the problem, it’s not applying the RPG direct damage to the wall it hits, instead it’s just exploding in the square before. If we fix that the full 1,000+ damage of the RPG should easily take out any single section of wall.[/quote]

It would be awesome if we actually got RPGs and the like to blow up in this way:

[tt]  
…88888…  
.8888888.  
…88888…  
…888…  
…888…  
----8----  
…8[color=red]|[/color]8…  
…|…[/tt]

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**Author:** ![Cowbot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/bc8723/32.png) [@Cowbot](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Cowbot)\
**Post date:** [July 5, 2015, 9:13pm UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/so-hey-about-those-explosions/9972/31 "2015-07-05T21:13:23Z")

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> [@Kevin Granade](#):
>
> The main issue here is we don’t have a way to handle “wall with hole punched in it”.

Why don’t add it? Currently we have wooden door → broken door → empty space stages and for a wall there can be the wall → wall with a hole (traversable with more move cost than broken window) → rubble/empty space

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**Author:** ![kevin.granade](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.cataclysmdda.org/kevin.granade/32/1316_2.png) [@kevin.granade](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/kevin.granade)\
**Post date:** [July 6, 2015, 8:22am UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/so-hey-about-those-explosions/9972/32 "2015-07-06T08:22:26Z")

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Because that whole thing is a terrible hack that requires having a different terrain type for each and every variant, so adding “with a hole in it” increases the number of wall terrain types by about 50%.  
I made a PR for highly-damaging projectiles having a chance (in the case of a RPG, certainty) of destroying walls they hit.

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**Author:** ![Random\_dragon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/4da419/32.png) [@Random\_dragon](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Random_dragon)\
**Post date:** [July 8, 2015, 6:08pm UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/so-hey-about-those-explosions/9972/33 "2015-07-08T18:08:07Z")

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So, turrets and other bots seem to just flat-out ignore 120mm tank shells now. And zombies can soak multiple near-misses unless they eat the actual projectile itself.

So explosions look bigger but don’t hit as hard. owo

EDIT: To be specific, has it been tweaked any since cf3ca08?

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**Author:** ![Coolthulhu](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.cataclysmdda.org/coolthulhu/32/2446_2.png) [@Coolthulhu](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Coolthulhu)\
**Post date:** [July 8, 2015, 8:02pm UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/so-hey-about-those-explosions/9972/34 "2015-07-08T20:02:42Z")

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> [@Random\_dragon](#):
>
> So, turrets and other bots seem to just flat-out ignore 120mm tank shells now.

Direct hit from a 120mm will vaporize a tank bot but not with the explosion (which was always quite weak), but with the physical damage from the hit itself.  
Explosion itself is comparable to grenade explosion, but without the shrapnel.

Made a PR buffing explosion damage:

> <https://github.com/CleverRaven/Cataclysm-DDA/pull/12864>
>
> Buff to numbers alone. Didn't change any mechanics.
> 
> Explosives will be rather w…eak against turrets (which have armor), but should be acceptable against unarmored stuff.
> 
> Numbers are eyeballed, I don't know exactly how high should they be. Any pointers?
> Examples like
> \- Grenade exploding in inventory should take at least 50% hp from 8 str survivor
> \- Dynamite exploding 3 tiles away should deal at least 20 dmg
> etc.

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**Author:** ![Random\_dragon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/4da419/32.png) [@Random\_dragon](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Random_dragon)\
**Post date:** [July 8, 2015, 8:06pm UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/so-hey-about-those-explosions/9972/35 "2015-07-08T20:06:11Z")

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Maybe what’d be better is if we had a way to vary explosion power to the same extent as grenades? As it stands we only have normal explosions and big ones.

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**Author:** ![Coolthulhu](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.cataclysmdda.org/coolthulhu/32/2446_2.png) [@Coolthulhu](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Coolthulhu)\
**Post date:** [July 8, 2015, 8:17pm UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/so-hey-about-those-explosions/9972/36 "2015-07-08T20:17:11Z")

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It would be.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Random\_dragon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/4da419/32.png) [@Random\_dragon](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Random_dragon)\
**Post date:** [July 8, 2015, 8:19pm UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/so-hey-about-those-explosions/9972/37 "2015-07-08T20:19:23Z")

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Though that would be more complexity adding it as modifiable properties at the ammo level, instead of just making a few additional flags for different additional explosion intensities.

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