For those who aren't aware, in 1.4 (Elara Edition) grenades are extremely powerful, too powerful. In 1.5 (Q? Edition) they have been reduced a bit, but they're still too powerful, despite them being 'the weakest they've ever been' (Quin). Servers which run SVN settings are play.redeclipse.net, freezurbern.com SVN r#### and my own, UK SVN Pro (but has explosives disabled), there may be others but I don't know them.
The main issue with grenades is not that they do too much damage, or have too much explosive range (partially) but rather how they work. I am aware that the things I'm about to say can be changed as server options, but most servers are unmodified and the goal here is to change things for the better, not just do my own thing and hope other collie on.
Fundamentally there are two reasons why grenades are too powerful:
- Kamikaze
- Cooking synergy
Kamikaze is much quicker to explain so I'll do that first.
Kamikaze
The issue here, is that as long as you are holding a grenade it's like a "don't touch me" sign, if you get to close chances are you'll die. This is worsened by the fact that if you suicide you also blow up and gain points for any kills you make. It's a horrible mechanic that isn't very nice as it really limits the potential of using most weapons without getting yourself killed in the process, and they don't even have to do anything to get you back, just stand there.
While I have mentioned this, this is not the key subject of this topic, it's just a minor addition.
Cooking synergy
Ever since 0.3 or so, grenades have had the ability to cook, that is you can hold down the fire button and then release it to 'shorten' the lifespan of the grenade, allowing you to control roughly when it'll explode. This on it's own is a great mechanic, sort of, the idea behind it is good but it has it's down fall.
Movement in Red Eclipse is quick, especially when you know how to do it properly and know maps well with good geometry. Additionally, the majority of the maps are small, or sectioned off into zones. A basic example of the zone idea is Ghost. Ghost has two bridges, two bases and the four corners, a more complex example would be Livefire, Livefire has the 'rooftops' (the wooden hut thing with the rocket spawn, and the surround raised area), the indoor corridors (indoor pusher and door etc), 'yard' (that bit below the 'rooftops'), and a few other zones like that. These zones split a fairly medium-large sized map into much smaller areas, and these small areas limit options for terrain traversal sometimes (especially rooms, like those in keystone2k). The combination of this, the cooking and the great speed that people can move, all the power is in the hands of the grenade user.
The map design creates synergy with the fact that you can cook grenades, and grenade cooking allows the user to create a powerful explosion at a precise location, and the small size of the map just makes them more and more effective. Ultimately, the smaller the map is and the more sectioned it is, the more powerful grenades become. This issue is further exacerbated by the fact that small maps often feature lots of grenade spawns, or higher density of grenade spawns (keystone2k has 8 in the rooms in total and 4 in the middle, while ghost only has 4, yet livefire has 10) and apart for the start where items are generated slightly randomly to curb lag there's no randomization in the spawn times, allowing people to setup almost farming routes to exploit the insane power of grenades.
The obvious fix would be to remove cooking, but Quin isn't big on the idea since that's been in since 0.3. I suggested replacing that instead of cooking changing the lifespan of the grenade, it changed how fast the grenade travelled in the air (and thus the distance it could cover and how it's effected by gravity). Without doing something to the cooking behaviour, I see the only way to fix the issue would be some combination of removing grenade spawns on smaller maps, increasing and randomizing their spawn times and generally making larger maps. This options are all much more work than changing 6 or 8 variables (either way, it still has to be balanced afterwards) and reducing the explosive radius (yet again).
Overall, the question I'm proposing is what would people prefer to be done, and no 'leaving them as they are' is not a valid option. You are allowed to vote for two options. For those who're interested the original conversation is in the link here.