Explosions

Explosive Damage to Walls and Objects

Explosive damage to objects (anything that isn't a unit) is constant; grenades will always form the same blast pattern on the same terrain. The peak damage is done at the center and falls off by 10 points per tile radius.

It's known that a Blaster Bomb is the only thing capable of blasting through a UFO outer hull (walls and roof). It does exactly 200 damage at the epicenter and only ever knocks out one tile.

When we boost the power of the humble High Explosive with a game editor we see the following:

• 190 for HE strength is not enough to bust a hull open.
• 200 is, but only one tile wide.
• 210 opens up a hole 3 tiles wide
• 220 opens up a hole 5 tiles wide.

For every 10 points of HE strength above 200, it adds 2 to the width of the hole.

- reposted from discussion, NKF/Jasonred/Zombie, strategycore forums 2005, --JellyfishGreen 02:21, 25 Aug 2005 (PDT)

Blast Diameters

Blast diameters differ according to terrain type. The table below was copied from a post by Zombie. To get radius, subtract 1 and divide by 2:

                                  Grass, 
                                   Lawn,  
                                   Corn  Dirt, Asphalt              Polar
                                  Fields,Weeds, Roads, White         Snow,
                            Wheat Desert White   Tin   Tile Concrete Mars  Mtn. Alien
Cost    $/HE   Weapon   HE Fields  Sand  Shngls Roofs  Roofs Walkway Sand Tundra Floors
 700    15.9  AC - HE   44    7     7      5      3      1      1      0     0     0
 300     6.0  Grenade   50    7     9      7      5      3      3      1     0     0
 500     9.6  HC - HE   52    7     7      7      5      3      3      1     0     0
 500     7.1   Prox G   70   11    13     11      9      7      7      5     0     0
 600     8.0  Small R   75    9     9      9      9      7      7      5     0     0
6700+2E 74.4  Alien G   90   13    13     13     13     11     11      9     3     0
 900     9.0  Large R  100   13    13     13     13     13     13     11     5     1
1500    13.6   Hi Ex.  110   13    13     13     13     13     13     13     7     3
8000+3E 40.0  Blaster  200   23    23     23     25     25     23     23    23    21

Where HE is the High Exposive rating for each round and: "White Shingles" is the roof on the gas station complex, "Mars Sand" is the soil on the Martian surface in Cydonia, "Alien Floors" is the floor of an alien base (alien ships were not checked), and "Concrete Walkway" is sidewalks near buildings or roads. Buy price or manufacturing cost are also shown (part cost only; does not include labor), whether Elerium-115 is needed ("+E"), and "Dollars per HE" (Cost/HE).

Zombie and NKF theorize that terrain "sops up" (or absorbs) a portion of the damage. Each tile from ground-zero absorbs part of the explosion until the damage left is less than tile "armor". So, while the OSG clearly states that damage drops off by 10 per tile radius, apparently the tiles are absorbing some of the damage, as well. Any units or items on the ground directly adjacent to the edge of the blast are not damaged. Blast diamaters are always symmetrically round, unless some of the terrain is "harder" than the rest. For example, if a bomb opens up a hole in a UFO, the blast pattern outside the UFO will be a standard half circle for "outdoors" damage, but inside the UFO, there will be a smaller pattern.

Terrain tile properties (Armor, HE Block, etc.) can be readily seen in DaiShiva's excellent MapView program. Caution: You must install the extensive MicroSoft .NET platform to use MapView; see DaiShiva's site.

Blaster Bomb Pattern

See Also

• Damage Formula
• Small Launcher

Additional specifics on blast damage by Zombie can be found here and here. To be collated and added to this wiki soon.