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XCOMUFO & Xenocide

How Do You Use Your Grenades?


Tkwiget

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Besides the Alien Gas Grenade, how do you use your grenades?

 

I'm mostly curious about the Boomeroid grenade. It hops towards a victium until it's within detention range. Makes it rather great to throw down hall ways or corridors where you suspect aliens are. They take up twice as much space as a Prox Mine and do 5 damage less. To me they're pretty good at screwing over aliens and are nice tools in trapping a door or hall way. =)

 

Any other grenade tactics? I know about the Teleporting Mine Layer, but I haven't got Teleporters yet...

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Besides the usual prime and throw at your target strategy? Hmm.

 

The AP grenades I keep as anti-brainsucker tools. They're also used as detonators for large piles of grenades. They're light and easy to carry, and aliens often carry piles of grenades. If you come across a tight pack of aliens, kill an anthropod or skeletoid and then lob an AP grenade into the mix. It might not kill all the aliens, or it might set off a chain reaction. Anything's possible.

 

The AP grenades useful for popper-bombing. If you've got marsec torso plates and there are poppers running about, you can fly at the highest elevation and drop your AP grenades set to detonate on impact.

 

Boomeroids, because they appear in such great numbers (off dead aliens), make great grenade piles. I must say that because I mostly play in real-time, I hardly ever use their hopping ability as it's very tricky to handle them properly without setting them off yourself. They can be used, but it's often faster to just set them to detonate on impact and throw them near the target, or to set them on their weakest setting and use them like a traditional proximity mine. In turn-based, because you can control the action a lot better, I imagine they'd have much more utility.

 

You just cannot forget those occasions where you get too close to the boomeroid and it hops closer to you. You run away, and it hops closer. You keep running and it keeps hopping after you. Amazing.

 

I think there's a little trick where you can increase some of the settings on the boomeroid by first accessing the proximity mine, then going back to the boomeroid.

 

Incendiary grenades are used to force-scatter a mob of aliens that are giving you grief. They can't shoot back at you while they're running away from the fire.

 

I used to use the stun grenade as a means of stunning my agents in case I'm in situation that would be wildly out of my control. Such as running around with no armour and it's a very hot area. Or if there are a lot of brainsuckers and there's no possible way for the soldier to fight them all off or the grenades the soldier is carrying are far too strong for destroying brainsuckers on you. I don't use this much these days as it was hard to time well - and it's easier to just lie down. I do use it on my scientists in base attacks. I crowd them together in the living quarters and knock them all out. I can't remember this was effective or a waste of time.

 

In Turn based, dropping stun grenade is even more effective. You only get stunned by the initial blast and while you're moving through the cloud. So if you stay still, any brainsuckers and hyperworms approaching you should be well sloshed by the time they get close to you.

 

Smoke grenades and other lingering area-effect weapons are used to cancel each other out. The aliens use this strategy a lot. A little too often sometimes, which is why you should bring lots of spares.

 

- NKF

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Yeah normally I run with 2 Stun, Smoke, and AP grenades with some IE Grenades. I don't use Power Swords with my regular Agents...teh swords are for the Androids. =)

 

I use Smoke Grenades to null Stun grenades from Aliens and my own Stun if necessary.

 

But with your comments with the hopping ability of the Boomeroid. I've practiced using it fairly well. Throw and run in the opposite direction. They're very good at trapping exits, doors, entrances, hall ways, etc. Nothing is more comical than seeing 8 Boomeroids chancing after a single Megaspawn coming down the elavator to assault my agents to get wasted in a couple seconds. The Boomeroid trapping strategy of mine would be much easier if I had teleportors. They might only do 40 damage, but chancing after my enemies is pretty cool. I sure as heck would run the grenade if Xcom3 had multiplayer ability. It's a great weapon and the hopping trick isn't that hard to pull off. You just have to click pause, prime, throw, and run the other way. That best works when you throw it through a door into an alien ship for example and then turn around and run. It will either stop completely and not follow you or it will stop at the door.

 

But I never let those times when the Boomeroid was too close to me and blew up on me keep me from using it. I've had far too much success with them than they have backfired on me. If I had to say...it would be a 90% success rate. Good enough for me for someone that doesn't have teleporters yet.

 

Also, don't IE Grenades detonate Boomeroids, Vortex Mines, Prox Mines, and High Explosive?

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Yeah normally I run with 2 Stun, Smoke, and AP grenades with some IE Grenades. I don't use Power Swords with my regular Agents...teh swords are for the Androids. =)

 

I use Smoke Grenades to null Stun grenades from Aliens and my own Stun if necessary.

 

But with your comments with the hopping ability of the Boomeroid. I've practiced using it fairly well. Throw and run in the opposite direction. They're very good at trapping exits, doors, entrances, hall ways, etc. Nothing is more comical than seeing 8 Boomeroids chancing after a single Megaspawn coming down the elavator to assault my agents to get wasted in a couple seconds. The Boomeroid trapping strategy of mine would be much easier if I had teleportors. They might only do 40 damage, but chancing after my enemies is pretty cool. I sure as heck would run the grenade if Xcom3 had multiplayer ability. It's a great weapon and the hopping trick isn't that hard to pull off. You just have to click pause, prime, throw, and run the other way. That best works when you throw it through a door into an alien ship for example and then turn around and run. It will either stop completely and not follow you or it will stop at the door.

 

But I never let those times when the Boomeroid was too close to me and blew up on me keep me from using it. I've had far too much success with them than they have backfired on me. If I had to say...it would be a 90% success rate. Good enough for me for someone that doesn't have teleporters yet.

 

Also, don't IE Grenades detonate Boomeroids, Vortex Mines, Prox Mines, and High Explosive?

 

Yep - I agree with you on the hopping: it generally isn't a problem unless you throw the thing close to your own agent, and even so, an agent running away from a boomeroid will sustain minor damage as the area effect of all explosives decreases rapidly from the epicentre of the explosion.

 

I used to do grenade stacks at the doors to UFOs, but I find it rarely necessary unless it's early game and I need to be very safe against poppers. Grenade stacking with a prox mine is a lovely trick, especially when you create a trail into a UFO ending with a prox mine, so when the first of the bad guys sets off the mine, it starts a chain reaction of grenades extending into the UFO, often wiping out several more.

 

I definitely use grenades to shake off brainsuckers, or to drop behind an agent running from a popper, again a rare occurrence. It has to be well timed, but sometimes an HE grenade with good timing is the best way to catch an erratically moving popper.

 

As for vortex mines, I use certain super-troopers as stormtroopers. Generally, stormtroopers have high strength, stamina, and reaction time. When storming a building, sometimes a stormtrooper will encounter a gaggle of bad guys, be they alien or syndicate/cult. I'll have the stormtrooper toss the vortex mine into the gaggle and immediately head for cover. Even a vortex mine usually doesn't wipe out a gaggle, but it injures them all, making their escape unlikely, and is a nice way to distract them while a fierce stormtrooper finds some distance.

 

I don't use smoke grenades in X3 - I prefer to use stun gas, especially to clear the furious smoke-grenade volley arthropods sometimes use coming out of a UFO. I clear the smoke with the stun gas, and turn it into a stun-trap at the same time.

 

And of course, those vortex mines are a must for taking out the reinforcement warp pads in the alien dimension...

 

:-)

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  • 3 weeks later...

I personally use roles for my troops, one of which is Grendienair.

I even change their names to the class they are assigned, makes it easier.

 

My Grendienairs typically dont use Vortex mines. and are usually Androids.

one pocket of Incen

one pocket of Stun plus the two shoulders

Left hand stun gun

2 rows of smokes in the backpack, three rows of Ap.

The right hand I usually keep empty, for obvious grenade throwing reasons ;)

Yes I know I could fit in that ONE MORE Grenade, but I really dont need it.. D:

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  • 1 month later...
I personally use roles for my troops, one of which is Grendienair.

I even change their names to the class they are assigned, makes it easier.

 

My Grendienairs typically dont use Vortex mines. and are usually Androids.

one pocket of Incen

one pocket of Stun plus the two shoulders

Left hand stun gun

2 rows of smokes in the backpack, three rows of Ap.

The right hand I usually keep empty, for obvious grenade throwing reasons ;)

Yes I know I could fit in that ONE MORE Grenade, but I really dont need it.. D:

I do the same thing. If I have a Teleporting Power Sworder Android...I call them Robot Samurai. If I have a Mind Layer, I call them that. But generally I have an overall superior Agent to everyone that I name after myself. XD

 

I still think Boomeroids are one of the best grenades in the game. Actually they are all pretty great.

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"I call them Robot Samurai. "

 

Robot Samurai. That IS cool.

 

Ah, Samurai. If only we could get martial arts into the game. Not wire tricks. Realistic stuff. Judo throws and Muay Thai/Karate basic strikes. Some decent, basic, proper sword strikes. Black, non-cartoon armour. Aliens that charge, grab, and even bite. A little melee fighting, just once in that blue moon in the game when it could happen.

 

And the Men In Black that the designers intended to put in the game. I am SO, SO intrigued by what their role might have been.

 

Am I the only one who thinks this?

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Everyone has their own ideas that could make a classic game like Xcom3 evolve into a much more colorful and interesting product. I wouldn't mind seeing some kind of hand-to-hand combat that Agents could use as well as more non-researchable items. I mean look at all the weapons we have in the game. We lack several traditional military weapons that have been used, modified, and still have been in military use for decades even today. A nice example of this are shotguns. We have none of those in Xcom3. We don't even have the freaking M9 Combat Knife. I wanna use a flipping Rambo knife on Aliens!!! LOL

 

So no, you aren't alone on this Aiki-Knight. I'm wondering if there's some way to like....mod the game to incorporate these things into the gameplay. It would make things rather interesting when you see gangsters rush you with M9 Combat Knives to try and stab you. LOL

Edited by Tkwiget
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Well in a matter of speaking, the Plasma sword is just a long knife. ^^'

 

I would have prefered a stabbing animation also, Or just to have the blade tilted like this

 

===|+|+|+|+|+|+|+

 

Rather than

+

+

+

+

+

+

+

=

=

=

 

The current animation given of the kick back would atleast make a slight stabbing motion ^_^...

 

 

What REALLY would improve the game isnt Melee combat.. but the Charging capability that would just be WONDERFUL for Marsec Machine guns and the plasma's.

 

Not to mention STUN GRENADES! >:D!

 

Although I do do the stun grenade rush in the cult bases, its so silly.

Prime the grenade to 7 seconds, drop it and pick it up.

 

It is Now Armed.

 

Run up to them and try to avoid the close range shots, the grenade will explode in hand, stunning the agent and the crowd.

 

Can also be done with the .25 seconds drop, although the timed way is cooler ^^'..

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Well in a matter of speaking, the Plasma sword is just a long knife. ^^'

 

I would have prefered a stabbing animation also, Or just to have the blade tilted like this

 

===|+|+|+|+|+|+|+

 

Rather than

+

+

+

+

+

+

+

=

=

=

 

The current animation given of the kick back would atleast make a slight stabbing motion ^_^...

 

 

What REALLY would improve the game isnt Melee combat.. but the Charging capability that would just be WONDERFUL for Marsec Machine guns and the plasma's.

 

Not to mention STUN GRENADES! >:D!

 

Although I do do the stun grenade rush in the cult bases, its so silly.

Prime the grenade to 7 seconds, drop it and pick it up.

 

It is Now Armed.

 

Run up to them and try to avoid the close range shots, the grenade will explode in hand, stunning the agent and the crowd.

 

Can also be done with the .25 seconds drop, although the timed way is cooler ^^'..

 

Why would you want to stun your own agent?

 

???

 

:-)

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The animations seem to suggest that the power swords aren't really swords. They're guns. They fire a bolt of plasma. Think Link's sword from the Legend of Zelda games. But I guess just giving a ranged weapon a very short 1-1.5 tile targeting range (yes, targeting range - the attack can actually travel further) was just a lazy way of putting in a melee weapon without having to write extra code for true melee combat.

 

If you want to see what I mean about the attack being able to travel further, try force-attacking with your power sword at a 45 angle. The plasma bolt will strike the ceiling or anything that gets in its way. This is a brillaint way of extending the attack, but it cannot be aimed and can only travel in an upward motion. Makes it useless, although it's a great way of attacking some of the mission targets in the alien dimension without actually having to stand near them for fear of them exploding.

 

Also, NRN_R_Sumo_1, why did you drop the grenade after setting its timer? The moment a grenade timer is set, it's armed. The only time when it has to hit the ground to go off is when it's set to blast on impact. Just saving you a few mouse and key strokes.

 

- NKF

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My favorite use for the swords is to zap holes in walls at the Cult of Sirius temples. Too bad it's not easier to acquire earlier.

 

As for grenades, I play turn-based.

 

AP - Popper/brainsucker/hyperworm/egg splatterers. Really weak otherwise.

 

Stun - The best weapon you start with. Take out scads of cultists and lesser aliens with one grenade. Great way to rack up some serious gear without a shot fired. I always buy every stun grenade available in the first three weeks. Stun grenades will also take loads of stun health off of those two-story things if you let them stew in a cloud of stun gas for a turn. Works through shields, which makes them invaluable for acquiring intact shields. Let a multiworm stew in gas and then shoot it up to knock it out without unleashing the hyperworms. Great freaking 'nade that never goes out of style against any opponent.

 

Smoke - Concealing an agent that's about to bite it or murk up an area that's covered by snipers. Very useful for certain parts of alien transports. Also puts out fires. Very handy sometimes.

 

Incendiary? 'Meh, never had much use for them. Setting stuff on fire tends to piss corporations off and the smoke and fire barrier tends to work to my disadvantage since it's hard to control.

 

Vortex Mines - Anything that doesn't have a shield. Any physical obstacle that needs to be removed.

 

Proximity mine - Sadly, kind of weak for the space it takes up. Nice to cover your back against brainsuckers I guess, but I don't do a lot with these since my apocalypse tactics tend to be pretty much offense over defense.

Edited by Pherdnut
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The stun grenades never go out of style. Can never get enough of them. Mind you, against the aliens, the AAG grenade usurp this position later on, but the stun grenades will continue to work on enemy human guards.

 

The incendiary grenade can be useful for breaking up mobs of enemies that are giving you grief - and to set off equipment on the ground. Every unit in the game automatically retreats from fire, and while they're doing this they cannot shoot back. There are other incendiary weapons, but this is just a handy portable one-shot device. That's a good thing, since you don't really want to create fires all the time.

 

One thing I've noticed about incendiary effects and multiworms is that the hyperworms get killed almost instantly if the multiworm is set on fire and then killed with AP rounds (this is an observation I found while using the autocannon). I couldn't say if this can be consistently reproduced. But yes, fire in Mega Primus buildings is best avoided in general. You can still use it briefly and keep smoke and stun grenades on hand.

 

The proximity mine by itself is unimpressive - though they make nice blast-on-impact grenades ;). Don't forget that you can add secondary effects to it by dropping other grenades next to it for an extra kick when it is set off. Even a carton of AP grenades piled onto or near a proxy mine can pack a massive punch against anyone that sets it off (a cluster bomb of sorts). Pile on heavier explosives like the vortex mines or even stun grenades or surplus weapons to create a variety of effects.

 

- NKF

Edited by NKF
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Hmm... I'll have to try that burn and blast thing on the multiworms. I hate wasting my precious stun grenades on them after I've caught my first one.

 

I did forget the funny factor of lighting humanoids on fire and watching them run around in circles.

Edited by Pherdnut
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The animations seem to suggest that the power swords aren't really swords. They're guns. They fire a bolt of plasma. Think Link's sword from the Legend of Zelda games. But I guess just giving a ranged weapon a very short 1-1.5 tile targeting range (yes, targeting range - the attack can actually travel further) was just a lazy way of putting in a melee weapon without having to write extra code for true melee combat.

 

If you want to see what I mean about the attack being able to travel further, try force-attacking with your power sword at a 45 angle. The plasma bolt will strike the ceiling or anything that gets in its way. This is a brillaint way of extending the attack, but it cannot be aimed and can only travel in an upward motion. Makes it useless, although it's a great way of attacking some of the mission targets in the alien dimension without actually having to stand near them for fear of them exploding.

 

Also, NRN_R_Sumo_1, why did you drop the grenade after setting its timer? The moment a grenade timer is set, it's armed. The only time when it has to hit the ground to go off is when it's set to blast on impact. Just saving you a few mouse and key strokes.

 

- NKF

 

NKF, This is only true when you put them into your back pack :P!

I have a habit of keeping them in my hands for beserker effect ^^'..

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Ah, yes, sorry. Now I've got you. You're sacrificing your second hand for the dead man's trigger trick. Has been a while since I've done that. At least, not since TFTD where the grenades cannot destroy other grenades. It worked differently there, mind you.

 

I think the grenade arms if you so much as move the item, even if returns to its place of origin. Can anyone check this please? Means you don't have to drop it. Just nudge it a bit.

 

- NKF

Edited by NKF
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I was stunned to read all these uses.

 

I was under the impression grenades were for tossing about randomly and destroying as much as the building as possible?

:devilburn:

The explosions are also good for making sure no-one hears you giggling like a little girl about all the destruction around you :madnoel:

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The variety of grenade types in Apocalypse is at fault there. They're so diverse that you can't just throw them at your enemies and expect them to do their thing anymore. If there were rocks in this game that we could pick up and throw, we'd go ape about the many ways we can use it to our advantage! From hitting aliens to shooting down battleships! :D

 

- NKF

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Ah, yes, sorry. Now I've got you. You're sacrificing your second hand for the dead man's trigger trick. Has been a while since I've done that. At least, not since TFTD where the grenades cannot destroy other grenades. It worked differently there, mind you.

 

I think the grenade arms if you so much as move the item, even if returns to its place of origin. Can anyone check this please? Means you don't have to drop it. Just nudge it a bit.

 

- NKF

 

How exactly does this "dead man's trigger trick" work? I do know how to do proximity-mine stacking with unarmed HE grenades, but is this different?

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The Deadmans trigger trick is like.... A Suicide bomb

Think running up with a couple of vortex mines and setting the primer to .25

 

Boom, Taking out a huge group of aliens around a corner you cant throw easily to with a wounded droid usually.. Really can be worth it.

 

Downside, you lost the agent

 

Plus side, you won the mission ^^

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The Deadmans trigger trick is like.... A Suicide bomb

Think running up with a couple of vortex mines and setting the primer to .25

 

Boom, Taking out a huge group of aliens around a corner you cant throw easily to with a wounded droid usually.. Really can be worth it.

 

Downside, you lost the agent

 

Plus side, you won the mission ^^

 

Are you suiciding your last living agent in the mission or something? I can see doing this when you're down to your last agent and you feel that retreat is unacceptable. But if you have other agents left, why not evac your wounded and regroup?

 

I suppose it's just a game! The way I play, I play as if all my agents were real people. Do I take this game too seriously? ;-)

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The dead man's trigger is basically the agent holding a grenade by its safety handle, with the pin removed. If the soldier dies or is incapacitated, the handle is released and the grenade gets armed.

 

It's not a trick I like to use in any one of the three games. However I do like to use pre-primed grenades in UFO/TFTD for quick deployment - having them blow up along with all their equipment if they get killed or stunned is just a nasty unwanted side effect.

 

- NKF

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I used to do the dead-man trigger in the first two games but I found it tended to cause as much trouble as it prevented. Sometimes it's handy to keep a squad tightly packed and that's really not a good idea when they're all set to explode when they die or get incapacitated. I still do it sometimes with stun grenades if I think somebody has a low chance of surving the next alien turn.

 

I tried messing around with the incendiary grenades in TB games and didn't find it especially useful. Stun grenades followed by regular attacks still seem to be the best way to take out the multiworms. They are, however, still a hilarious way to send anthropods running around in a tizzy. I knew smoke and stun grenades put out fires but I also recently discovered that using a medkit on an injured agent will also put out a fire if he's burning.

 

Another intensely useful thing about grenades in TB is that they can be primed and dropped without expending a single TU since it no longer costs anything to prime, drop, or move items around in an agent's inventory. Flying agents can make bombardment attacks without any time units expended (100% accuracy since you always know where the grenade is going to land) and when you make the unpleasant discovery that that multiworm wasn't stunned at all and are in the middle of a pile of hyperworms you're much more likely to survive a couple dropped AP grenades at your agent's feet than the hyperworms on the following turn.

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