What if explosive weapons were redesigned not to do block damage?

[ThePHiLsTeR [¬º-°]¬]

We can't ever use explosives when looting because everything will be destroyed. To counter how strong explosives are, we can make the ammo cost more to make and also allow self-damage. Can also have designated explosive ammo that cause block damage for when that is needed.

What you think?

[seven]

Most explosives already cause minimal block damage. I think only dynamite and one of the rocket types will destroy blocks in a few hits.

[ThePHiLsTeR [¬º-°]¬]

Originally posted by seven:

Most explosives already cause minimal block damage. I think only dynamite and one of the rocket types will destroy blocks in a few hits.

Ya, but what about those cardboard boxes that carry loot and other very fragile stuff?

[Macdallan]

TL:DR? Nope. Terrible idea.

Long version:

I can understand why some players might find that fun, but I don't like that idea if your suggestion were implemented and forced on everyone. If it's done via a mod or a setting that players can toggle then it's fine but it's not something I'd want and I'd never use that setting.

Why? Because the game, on the standard (i.e. intended) difficulty settings is far too easy already. Looting most buildings is extremely easy, even when many of the zeds are irradiated or there are large groups (like in some Tier 4 and 5 POIs). I find there's very little to no challenge in the game these days unless I crank up several of the difficulty options at least a little.

There's also a bit of a risk/reward system in play. You either risk being injured or killed and go in using weaker weapons so you don't damage anything, or you go in tossing pipe bombs and shooting shotguns or other heavy weapons and risk destroying some of the loot.

The other question is why an explosive, that creates numerous projectiles and force when they explode, would somehow do no damage to blocks but firearms and other weapons still would. Would you also change it so all firearms, bows, crossbows, and melee weapons other than "tools" did zero block damage?

From a logical point of view using most types of explosives inside buildings would damage everything in the blast area. Depending on how powerful the blast is the damage might be enough that most items and containers would be heavily damaged, ruined to the point where the items are useless, or possibly completely destroyed. The same goes for any weapons. Even a few 9mm bullets, or a couple arrows, might be enough to damage or destroy something, or at least render it useless.

In my current game I have to be very careful with my shotgun because the damage is so high it can wreck some containers in a single hit. It often blasts through zombies and destroys what's behind them even with a choke and at close range. The shotgun makes killing zeds easy but I have to actually think about where I'm aiming and what's behind anything I want to shoot. It makes me want to try to be sneaky and use my crossbow or pistol (with suppressor) whenever I can. If I could just toss explosives around and also use my shotgun without any risk at all it would make even tier V POI clearing too easy. Usually you can move to a spot where you can shoot heavy weapons or use explosives with no real danger to any potential loot so it's not like it's even that limiting now. I really wouldn't want it to be any easier.

Explosives should damage the user every single time the player is caught in the blast radius but the entity damage is very high and player health is very low so instead of tweaking every other damage type that the player might be hit with they simply made players take low damage from explosives (35% according to the wiki).

The other reason is simply because we don't need this because there are explosives in the game that cause almost no block damage (info from the wiki). It's also why we don't need explosives that cause block damage because we already have a few that are intended to do high block damage. Pipe bombs do 5 block damage but 230 entity damage. In most places you can easily toss a few of them and it shouldn't destroy most blocks. Grenades and contact grenades only do 10 block damage. All of the land mines do 10, 15, or 20 block damage which is still very low. Exploding arrows and exploding crossbow bolts only do 2 block damage. Even the frag rockets only do 20 block damage. The only explosives that do a lot of block damage are the gas barrels (500), HE rockets (2500), dynamite (3000) and timed charge (3000) and they should. I actually think most of the explosives should do a bit more block damage than they do.