Grenade Launchers are like leppers

[Oewyn]

I think the grenade launcher class requires a significant amount of micromanagement in order to be effective.  They are like leppers, and I do everything I can to keep them away from my other ships.  The problem is that they will kill themselves just as fast as they kill the enemy if you don't watch them constantly.  I do everything I can to keep them separated from the enemy, but they still end up significantly damaging themselves when a lone ship flys into the launchers.  I can micromanage by turning them to low-power when I don't want them to attack that ship, but there is no real way of controlling them without constant supervision.

A simple suggestion would be to dramatically reduce the damage that grenade launchers to do themselves (maybe a .1 damage bonus or so).  It makes since that ships designed to launch grenades would have some sort of extra protection against their own weapons, especially if they have to fire at another ship at close range.

Another, more CPU intensive solution would be during targeting, determine how many friendlies and how many enemies are within the blast radius.  If there are more enemies than friendlies, fire away.  (Obviously this wouldn't be an ideal situation because grenades take time to travel, and the CPU involved just doubled for grenade launchers (because they have to get the list of targets in the radius anyways when they hit)

[Vaos]

Maybe they could have a minimum range?

[I-KP]

Maybe.  I don't use them; almost pointless and pose just as much danger to your own forces.  Too micro-intensive (which rubs against the grain of the game a fair bit IMO).  No-one would choose to use these unless they absolutely had nothing better (and there is always something better).

[Oewyn]

Minimum range isn't going to help the other grenade launchers shooting at them.

[RCIX]

I really think friendly fire should be removed from them at this point. It was a nice idea, and proabably realistic, but it just isn't seeming to work for this unit...

[Spikey00]

From a previous post that I made, inclusion of a maximum target limit to the Grenade Launcher would be a possible solution.

[Oewyn]

I don't know if that would necessarily help.  Grenade round goes off, damages 10 friendly units, and because of the target limit, doesn't damage the one enemy unit within range.

I think the idea of the grenade launcher unit is interesting, but without some greater firing controls, or better ability to micromanage them (which chris has stated he opposes forced micromanagement) I don't think the grenade launcher will be used by anyone more than once.  All other AOE ships do not do friendly fire damage.  Beam frigates have a much longer range, and are in general more effective at taking out masses of enemy ships.

I've even tried to use grenade launchers on defence, they occasionally work well against ships that are tractored, but are very dangerous against ships like raiders who ignore tractor beams, and fly so fast that the grenades may take 20 seconds or more to actually connect.  You will never know what the target is next to 20 seconds from now, you just have to hope they aren't right next to your command station, or power plants.

The difficulty of preventing friendly fire, and the ridiculously high energy of each ship (400) makes them not worth the effort 95% of the time.

[RCIX]

What about an "immune to grenade fire" feature attached to grenade launchers and most (all) structures? This would make them useful in a lone raiding sense and as a defense tool as well!

[x4000]

I've been thinking that these require too much micro, too.  The friendly-fire thing is a dangerous path to go down, and is counter to the design of the game in general.  In the next prerelease, grenade launchers won't affect anything but enemy units any longer.

[CogDissident]

I entirely agree with that. The friendly fire makes the zenith beam frigates much better at doing the same thing. But the minimum range (if you made it a bit bigger it'd make even large masses of them to not use one side to fire at the other side) does add a unique aspect which differentiates them enough.

My vote is to increase the minimum range slightly at the same time as you disable friendly fire.

[Vaos]

I'm trying the 2.001V Grenade Launchers right now, and I am having a good time with them. Just removing the friendly fire effect seems to be doing it! They need support to be effective though, I find fighters pretty good at that.

[Spikey00]

(I was perhaps thinking of having them damage perhaps ~one allied ship, and have a different cap for enemy units.)

Either works for the benefit of the game--thanks for the update, Chris.  (: