High Explosives vs. Alien Grenades

[Fox]

Which of these is REALLY the more powerful? It's weird... I was playing today, and I noticed alien grenades have a bigger impact area, and destroy more obstructions and stuff, but only the high explosive can rip open UFO corners, but not often.

 

Any ideas?

[BladeFireLight]

the HE hits for 110 and AG for 90 but at a larger radious..

[NKF]

No, not really. I just checked, but I'll check a few more times tonight. The actual blast radius is the same.

 

However the inner ring in the blast area is different between the two grenades (you can tell, since the inner ring completely blasts off the tile face whereas the area around is merely damaged lightly). The alien grenade has a smaller inner radius than the high explosive.

 

But this is only because the high explosives have more raw power to distribute than the alien grenades.

 

edit: Both the alien grenade and high explosives have a 13 tile diameter (or roughly 6 tiles out on all sides from the centre of the explosion).

 

- NKF

[BladeFireLight]

I stand corrected

[Fox]

Any idea as to why only corners of UFOs can get blasted instead of straight edges?

[NKF]

Well, I don't think the game engine was built to accomodate corner walls. I'm guessing the corner walls are really solid objects made to look like walls, but since they are objects (like the power units), things can still be thrown into the tile. Well, okay, so it's still a wall, but the implementation is still slightly different from the straight edge walls.

 

The only place I've noticed corner walls that can be blown up with a plain-vanilla hi-explosive was in the mountain map (it's also the only map I know of where you can blow up your Skyranger's ramp and landing gear).

 

* * *

 

I spent some time comparing the blast diameters of the various 'explosive' weapons in the game. Here are the results -- the diameter is n + 1 + n, with 1 being the center tile and the n's being the number of tiles that project out on either side (technically, the blast radius):

 

Note: These values may be off by +1 or -1, since the terrain where the explosive detonates does seem to influence the blast size. Also, the sizes for incendiary blast areas are determined by the diameter of the flames generated - the actual blast area for the initial impact may be different.

 

Grenades

 

Regular(50): 4 + 1 + 4

Proximity(70): 5 + 1 + 5

Alien(90): 6 + 1 + 6

High-Explosive (110): 6 + 1 + 6

 

 

Gun ammunition

 

HC-HE(56): 4 + 1 + 4 (Actually smaller blast area than the regular grenade. Has 8 less tiles on the diagonals)

HC-IN(60): 3 + 1 + 3

AC-HE(44): 3 + 1 + 3

AC-IN(48): 2 + 1 + 2

 

Rocket(75): 4 + 1 + 4

HWP Rocket(85): 5 + 1 + 5

Large Rocket(100): 6 + 1 + 6

Incendiary Rocket(90): 4 + 1 + 4

Hovertank Blaster Bomb(140): 10 + 1 + 10

Blaster Bomb(200): 11 + 1 + 11

 

 

Misc:

Smoke grenade(60): 6 + 1 + 6 (based on a 0-turn grenade)

Electro flare(n/a): 5 + 1 + 5 (counted until no further variation in light level)

Stun Bomb(90): I couldn't get it since no tiles are damaged, but I'm guessing it may be 6 + 1 + 6.

 

Again, these values are probably off by -/+ 1 on either side since I wasn't watching the terrain when doing some of the tests.

 

Hmm, I suppose with this information I can now go and perform feats of stupidity by having soldiers throwing really powerful explosives at a nearby spot just 1 tile out of the bomb's blast radius.

 

- NKF

 

Edit: Yes, yes, I sometimes have far too much time on my hands, time I should be using for other more important tasks...

[Mouse Nightshirt]

LOL! When NKF does something, he does it REALLY well

[Ki-tat Chung]

why is it that i can't walk onto the "back" wall of the UFO? the same applies to the back of the triton in TFTD

[JellyfishGreen]

NKF: I was messing around in a hex editor (HexWorks) looking for soldier names and I noticed the explosion data is sitting in the "detblob.dat" (Detonation Blast Objects?) as plain as day. In my 16-column editor, there are 6 circles of increasing size, each with some "10's" at the center - total devastation, I'd wager- ranging from 1 to 11 columns across, 11 probably the blaster bomb. The 10's are surrounded by other numbers (11-17, 17 at the fringes) which would correspond to the damage falloff with distance.

 

Following these are some strange shapes centered on "53", they might be stun clouds but they're not all circular.

[NKF]

Not having a hex editor at the moment, I opened it up as a binary with 16 columns in MS Edit 1.1 (yay for old technology!).

 

If I'm not mistaken, those last funny shapes are arrow heads. Starting with an arrow pointing upwards, and then going counter clockwise until it's pointing to the upper left. Can't recall where these would be in the game.. not counting the bobbing arrow above the selected soldier.

 

Hmm, I wonder what would happen if the file was loaded into memory as a raw bitmap? Would have to muck about with the palette a bit.... but, hmm.

 

The expanding circle does look like a blast radius, but then again, the game knows how to automatically adjust the size of the explosion depending on how much damage each high explosives does (I mean, editing a grenade to 255 HE is going to leave a pretty huge crater for sure! Okay, a flat crater, but most definitely a big mess).

 

Unused graphics perhaps?

 

- NKF

[Spaceman42]

Motion detector?

 

I think you might be on the wrong track with that one, me buckos.

 

[Aye, based on where it is, it's very likely the wrong tree. UFOGRAPH is graphics. DETBLOB is very likely the Detector images, from that.]

[NKF]

Detblob... DETector BLOBs? Sounds about right.

 

Or DETector BLip OBjects?

 

Yeah, that's right, the motion detector has a range of circular blips of varying sizes. The arrows show which direction the motion detector's user is currently facing.

 

Each byte in the file is really just a palette entry.

 

- NKF

[JellyfishGreen]

I stand corrected. I guess "10"=bright yellow, "17"=faint yellow. That's an awful lot of different blip sizes in the motion detector!

[Spaceman42]

Stol^H^H^H^HBorrowed from the X-COM: Xenocide Remake boards:

 

somethings in the blast radius are not damaged. if you read the x-com official strategy guide (the book, I have not seen it online anywhere, yet), it tells you things like how they calculate explosion radius. It starts the highest and subtracts 10 each space, and everything has "armor" so they don't always get destroyed.

[Alitorious]

Explosions also have "shadows," I've found. If you detonate something like a blaster bomb in an alien junction (the little hallways between rooms), the blast radius isn't a perfect sphere, because walls block it. This also works for obstructions like trees, streetlamps, skyranger landing gear, and so forth.

 

But I guess some explosions are so powerful that they just plow through weaker objects (Like blaster bombs and trees.) I do think your soldiers are still hurt a little less than if they weren't under any cover.

 

And to that thing about blast radius objects not damaged, I agree. That's why after how many high explosives you put next to that ufo wall, it won't bulge. I guess if the wall's strength is stronger than the strength of the explosion, it doesn't get damaged. If it's weaker, then it gets destroyed.

[Spaceman42]

[same disclaimer]

 

Explosion damage is a straight linear equation based on the distance from the blast, damage does not spread to upper levels (so if you are on a hill, yet you are still on level one of the map, you take damage, if you are flying right above a grenade, it won't hurt you at all) If you were to draw the grid and mark where the grenade lands it has a specific distance for each grenade with a linear transition from distance to damage. The damage is dependant on the range of the weapon (a blaster bomb has a greater radius than a human grenade) and the damage produced. I'll try to get this right...

 

.............3

.............6

.............9

3..6..9..12..9..6..3

.............9

.............6

.............3

 

That is pretty much the explosion grid for a 12 damage weapon with radius 4.

 

as far as I know, armor creates a percentage change to damage, it doesn't absorb the armor value worth of damage before damage is subtracted from your health; although that might be the case, i haven't heard for sure on that yet.

[NKF]

Explosions aren't exactly 3d, as you say, but they do cause some form of vertical damage.

 

Each tile in the map consists of several layers The best way I can describe it is perhaps in just saying that each tile consists of floor tile then the object/unit/wall space where units and objects go. In order for unit/objects to stand on a tile, they must be standing on top of a floor tile, otherwise they'll just fall through to the tile below.

 

The edge of the explosion can get to the level above, but only as far as the floor tile and not the object/unit space -- hence why throwing a grenade onto the floor or firing a blaster bomb into a farm building tends to make a hole in the ceiling/roof, but not hurt any units/objects/walls that were on the damaged roof/ceiling tile. The unit/objects will either fall down to the next level, or in some cases, continue floating (more often seen in hilly terrain).

 

On a less related note: re hilly terrain: If you find you cannot throw onto slopes even though you should, the ground tile may actually be higher than it looks. Try raising the elevation level a bit then try throwing again. Very common problem with TFTD's seabeds.

 

- NKF

[Alitorious]

Yeah, it seems the hills are rather strange with vertical alignment.

 

I have a pic where two soldiers were standing on the edge of a hill, and an alien grenade exploded two tiles ahead of them, but since they were on a different elevation, they weren't hurt at all. (And they only had personal armour)

Edit: And they appeared to be on the same elevation, too. Not on the sloped side, they were just on the edge of the plateau.

 

And I get what you're saying with the layers bit.

 

Unrelated: you can tend to "stack" people by having two people on top of each other, no powersuits, but on different levels of a building. Then shoot out the top floor, and the soldiers will stack. Very odd.