Let's talk Grenades

[Panfilo]

In the thread about Vests it came to my attention that not all grenades are created equal. Sadly, grenades that destroy cover seem to be valued so much more highly than all the rest. I feel like if that is really true it might be a bit of a balance issue. Because most other grenades are built through the proving grounds, one at a time, and at random (and costing 1 precious Elerium core each) I think they should be more than a lateral upgrade to a Plasma grenade, which only requires a Muton autopsy and proving ground upgrade but at that point you have an unlimited number of Jack of All Trades, Master of All type grenade.

EMP- can be purchased, so you can have many of them much more reliably. While it only works on mechanical targets, this is also good (doesn't hurt your own guys if used near friendlies). Fully upgraded they also do a LOT of damage, especially in the hands of a grenadier offering even more bonuses to them. Doing a lot of armor-ignoring damage is excellent vs sectopods. Finally, because enemy beacons are mechanical, they are an easy way to quickly destroy them on timed missions.

Acid- probably the only type that can really compete with plasma, being that they shred armor even better and work vs all types of enemies. Working against all types of enemies also means that mechanical units will avoid acid pools if possible compared to fire or gas saturated tiles.

Fire- Only really effective vs biological enemies, and some types of cover appear to eventually get destroyed through burning. I think the main asset is units that are on fire can't use many abilities, so enemies like Stun Lancers, Crysalids, and Faceless are probably pretty vulnerable.

Gas- According to some people, gas grenades are the worst of the lot. Their main draw seems to be that they have the biggest base radius, and afflicted enemies get stat debuffs. Because the gas doesn't destroy nearby terrain, they're safe to use in supply raid missions to AoE groups of Advent troopers. But the gas gets in your way too, and the DoT doesn't seem all that effective (fire seems like it does more damage over time).

One way I would change it if I knew how to with mods is to give Fire and Gas grenades additional properties; Fire tiles have a chance to spread VERTICALLY so if you set the ground floor of a building on fire you could potentially level the whole building in a few turns by letting the fire spread up floors. Fire would also do a Will test to check for Panic so setting a group of enemies on fire causes more chaos. For gas I would do the opposite; gas settles, being heavier than air so it would be easier to hit multiple enemies on different elevations (one way they try to avoid getting hit by grenades). Also, assuming it doesn't already do this, cover should be meaningess vs a gas grenade; an advent trooper standing behind a friggin shopping cart shouldn't be getting some gasmask efffect just because it is 'blocking' the source of the blast. So gas would saturate a much bigger area, you wouldn't have to worry as much about where the epicenter was.

[Eggy]

Like with all the skill choices in xcom2, lots of stuff sounds and indeed is fun but is not as combat effective as its alternatives. When the most efficient way to deal with an alien is to kill it and there is no downside to killing it then this is how I make my choices.
I generaly ran with 2 grenadiers per sqaud in all my playthoughs on all difficultys. As soon as I could 1 had 2 EMPs and 1 acid, the other got 2 acid and 1 emp.
EMP works so well on codex, robots, the eyeball thing and sectopds. Allowing me to clear entire packs with 1 nade.
Acid does a nice amount of damage, adds a damage over time and also most importantly shreds armour.
Plasma does a nice amount of damage to every thing but it rarely instagibbs anything.

Fire should have had more interaction with the environment and cover. Fuled fire (read napalm canisters) spreads and burns for a long time. It could of been used to block areas off and should have triggered secondary fires/explosions.

[!?!]

Smoke is the worst.

[Nokad]

You summed it up very good. Personally I wouldn't say that it's a balance issue, it's just that some grenades are more situational than the allrounder plasma and acid and it's completely dependent on the playstyle. I for my part love incendiary, never used emp and I would rate the flash bang higher than the gas grenade. But like I said, preference and also squad configuration have a high impact on that.

The main problem from my experience is that you don't know what you're up against until you build the shadowchamber, and that is making the allround grenades simply better imo.

But if I'm up against many melee units for example, the incendiary grenade (bomb) is superior because the enemies are not able to use theire melee attack while burning and since most of them don't use cover there's no need to blow it. Shred and damage is lower than the acid of course, but that doesn't bother me much when I can make a berserker harmless for 2 turns and focus on taking down the other targets first.

[hghwolf]

The real problem with both gas and incendiary grenades, and to a lesser extent with acid grenades, is that they are effective over multiple turns and statted that way, whereas EMP is straight damage and plasma is damage, shredding, and cover removal, giving you a greater chance at killing something outright rather than hoping the debuffs and denial tiles don`t allow the enemy to hurt you. If you can`t kill the enemy this turn flashbangs are better to debuff with due to their large radius, and if you CAN kill the enemy this turn you won`t have to bother debuffing them.

There just aren`t any situations where "combo" damage and debuff grenades are more useful than a grenade focused on either appilcation. If there were enemy types particularily susceptible to fire or poison they might have an application similar to EMP bombs, but as it stands there`s little reason to take the "combo" grenades over the "specialized" grenades/

[JaegerBane]

Yep, good summary. I guess the main point is that destroying cover is such a major advantage that for the other grenades to compete, they need to do something equally powerful. Acid and EMP are arguarbly almost there, as EMP basically ignores armour with a potential stun and Acid does shredding better (particularly with Rulers).

I like the idea of Incendiary causing a per-turn panic check. Personally I think Gas Grenades should drop the DoT and function like AoE Repeaters - every turn all organic targets in the AoE need take a test with a 5% chance of instakill. Powerful, certainly, but restricted, high chance of doing nothing, and still cost a slot/core to bring in. At the moment they're like rubbish versions of Acid.

[learnedhand]

Don't see the problem personally. All the grenades have their uses and have saved my bacon many a time.

I think the real issue is the nerf to grenade damage/radius which I feel hits the special grenades harder. It was not hard to like incendiaries that could do 7 DOT damage a turn, especially in multi pod engagements when you can't focus fire on everyone or need to close off certain paths.

They are still damn effective on rulers.

[Panfilo]

Originally posted by JaegerBane:

Yep, good summary. I guess the main point is that destroying cover is such a major advantage that for the other grenades to compete, they need to do something equally powerful. Acid and EMP are arguarbly almost there, as EMP basically ignores armour with a potential stun and Acid does shredding better (particularly with Rulers).

I like the idea of Incendiary causing a per-turn panic check. Personally I think Gas Grenades should drop the DoT and function like AoE Repeaters - every turn all organic targets in the AoE need take a test with a 5% chance of instakill. Powerful, certainly, but restricted, high chance of doing nothing, and still cost a slot/core to bring in. At the moment they're like rubbish versions of Acid.

Cover removal is definitely strong, and I feel like the grenades that can't remove cover need to offer an equivalent tactical benefit over this difference. That way multiple types of grenades are equivalently good, it comes down to personal preference/enemy composition. This makes some of the more situational grenades more useful.

Personally with poison gas I'd actually do the opposite of your suggestion; have the front loaded damage be small but the DoT be huge. This is contrasted with fire/acid which do more upfront damage and a lower DoT. It should be somewhat of a gamble; you could either front load damage with a plasma grenade and finish off the now-flanked enemy with a buddy's rifle shot, OR you could hit him with gas and have the DoT potentially do the equivalent of that rifle shot on the enemy turn, saving an ally an action that could be used elsewhere. If it works out well, multiple enemies could be finished off on the enemy turn.

If it cut down their movement enough and you had the right upgrades, you could also force the opponent to waste all their actions trying to get out of the gas cloud on their turn, completely denying them the ability to counterattack. A 2-turn kill isn't as bad if you can pretty much guarantee they couldn't retaliate.

[ProjectCaddyGuy]

I noticed the Frost Bomb wasn't listed. I know it's a DLC piece and by itself, but I found it pretty useful for sneak attacking the initial clusters of enemies. My break conceal default attack is often a grenade attack of some sort. Good way to initiate and ambush and turn everyone's overwatch shot into an insta kill.

[!?!]

You do realize that any crazy changes to elements will also apply to you?

I for one would rather not roll the bones on instakill-poison or have my guys also panic when RNGsus decides to set someone on fire.

[JaegerBane]

Originally posted by chris:

You do realize that any crazy changes to elements will also apply to you?

I for one would rather not roll the bones on instakill-poison or have my guys also panic when RNGsus decides to set someone on fire.

So don't roll them then. Use soldiers with Poison immunity - 50% of a squad containing one of each class will have it just with their normal perks/kit.

Or just don't run into it much the same way you don't shoot grenades into your own soldiers.

[alangriffith]

No mention of ruler aliens?

I thought the ruler alien thing of taking DOT on each of their 'reaction' actions was a way of maknig the DOT grenades have value.

To me the main issue is not so much the resource cost as the randomness. I can get plasma grenades and EMP grenades for certain witha proving ground project (and upgrade EMP grenades with a second), and I start able to make flashbang grenades. So why do I want to bother with the experimental grenade research for a chance at acid grenades when I could just as easily get gas? And even if I can find a use for one experimental grenade type, I probably only need one, but any future experimental grenade project risks me getting a second of the original type.

Generally I spend my cores on ammo types instead - plasma, emp, flashbang (and freeze with ruler DLC) are more than enoguh grenade types for me.

I think the easiest balance fix would simply be to put EMP and possibly plasma grenade in the proving ground experimental as types you could roll. Incentive to do the project, and if you get out other types you may as well try them out and find a use for them. For that matter why not put bluescreen roudns in the experimental ammo project.

A single plasma grenade also means other grenades become more relevant as other grenade types become an alternative to normal grenades, rather than having to beat a plasma grenade for you to consider them worthwhile. Though an alternative change would be making any experimental grenade researched give you the ability to build more of them via engineering (and stop future experimental grenade projects from giving you the same result).

[Panfilo]

Originally posted by chris:

You do realize that any crazy changes to elements will also apply to you?

I for one would rather not roll the bones on instakill-poison or have my guys also panic when RNGsus decides to set someone on fire.

That just gives you an incentive to have more elemental immunity. Psi operative can even get an elemental immunity bubble which helps.

[Nokad]

Originally posted by alangriffith:

To me the main issue is not so much the resource cost as the randomness. I can get plasma grenades and EMP grenades for certain witha proving ground project (and upgrade EMP grenades with a second), and I start able to make flashbang grenades. So why do I want to bother with the experimental grenade research for a chance at acid grenades when I could just as easily get gas? And even if I can find a use for one experimental grenade type, I probably only need one, but any future experimental grenade project risks me getting a second of the original type.

I absolutely agree. While I like this random outcome mechanic it could have been implemented way better. Like once you finished a grenade/ammo project and get the "prototype" you can then build it just like the other stuff and won't get it again in the proving ground. To balance this it could take more time.

[Lemonhead]

Hit the nail on the head there. Experimental grenades are rarely worth the time/cost/rng, simply because you already got grenades covered with plasma. Resources are better spent on other projects.

For the grenades to be worth it, they would have to be significantly better at their respective niches like EMP is. It would be a power creep though, so enemies would have to be stronger as well.

[Adeptus Stark]

I like the acid grenade early on, but after that the only useful one (besides plasma) is to have an EMP "bomb" to hit a multi robot enemy pod later in the game. Plasma grenades are great, but destroy loot. :/